UNIVERSITY and SOUL

 by Benedetta Capelli

If there is a key word that has crossed the Dies Academicus, the beginning of the 2024-2025 academic year of the Pontifical Lateran University, it is “soul”.

A term that for the rector of the university, Monsignor Alfonso Amarante, implies a constant work of dialogue and meeting between teachers and students but also the need to dare by starting virtuous paths, exploring roads that others have not traveled and that is not just an occupation of spaces. There are three steps indicated, also the result of the commitment of a new Superior Coordination Council made official only last Saturday, November 9.

The first concerns the growth of the training path, looking at the quality of the teaching staff which last year numbered 139 professors and 1137 students; followed by the search for new communication strategies to spread the Pul's offer and finally the development of a three-year plan that includes the identification of possible donors/contributors in Italy and abroad.

"Soul" is also the word that Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, emphasized in his speech, declining together with wonder, creativity and freedom of thought. "The university," he stated, "is a space in which the individual finds the conditions to become the protagonist of his own history, an extraordinary interweaving of dialogue." The cardinal also did not fail to call for a change in the university, speaking of courage and audacity which are the right ingredients to dare and not lose the ability to be "the salt of the earth and the light of the world." "The university is a laboratory of dialogue also with Christ and needs interlocutors, inspired teachers and credible witnesses."

The prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education then wanted to thank Giacomo Poretti, a comic actor and successful protagonist of several films made by the trio Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo, for the beautiful and intense reflection on the soul that he gave to attentive students and teachers interested in the novelty of a comedian who engages in a sort of Lectio Magistralis. Poretti drew from his repertoire, summarizing parts of a 2018 show entitled Fare l’anima. And he also drew from his private life, talking about the birth of his son Emanuele, about the visit to the hospital by Don Bruno, the priest who had married him. That phrase thrown out there after playing with the little newborn was disconcerting: «well, you have made a body, now you have to make the soul».

But how is the soul made? What is it? Where is it? When is it born? These are «childish questions» said Don Davide Milani, official of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, introducing Giacomo Poretti. Questions that each of us has asked ourselves in life and to which the actor obviously does not offer an answer, his merit is to show the strength or rather the weakness of this word.

A word, he said, that has settled in his heart, generating a slight annoyance but also anxiety. "It made me tender," he explained, "and it seemed to me that it had the painful lament of abandonment, that I had never deigned to sympathize with it, to listen to it. I thought about the solitude of words, perhaps a word must be frequented, it needs care, if they are not spoken, words are forgotten and disappear. Dictionaries can then be the cemetery of words, think of terms such as meekness, villeggiatura, paltò, infinito, speme and indeed anima".

For Poretti, today's man seeks reassurance in what he sees, in technology for example, in the algorithm that chooses for us, in big data but with the soul we must deal. "Priests can turn your life upside down", nothing more true, as it is true - continued the actor - that the choice to dedicate himself to the priesthood makes one think. For him, priests are "stubborn men" who have not given in to the charm of influencers, "who have the nerve to wake up every morning and dress in black, these poor devils try to tattoo something precious and mysterious in our hearts". Precious and mysterious like the soul.

Osservatore Romano

ITALIAN