By Donna Orsuto
ROME — The 14th annual Rome Seminar of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), “Creating a Culture of Dialogue: A Dynamic Exchange between Catholic Higher Education and the Curia,” held June 10-14, just concluded.
I remember distinctly how it all began.
Sixteen years ago, Dr. Monika Hellwig, who at that time was the president of ACCU, attended a Lay Centre benefit evening in Washington, D.C. At the end of the evening, she gave me her business card and suggested that I telephone her the next time I was in Washington. A few months later, I telephoned. We met and the Rome Seminar was born. We brainstormed over lunch about what it would be like to bring members of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities to Rome to meet and dialogue with members of the Vatican Curia. Our aim was to offer trustees, administrators and faculty leaders of ACCU institutions a first-hand opportunity to explore the intellectual and spiritual legacy of the Catholic Church in order to strengthen and promote the mission of Catholic higher education in the United States.
Over the years, the seminar has evolved into opportunities for in-depth conversations with representatives of various dicasteries of the Holy See, including officials from the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and professors from Rome’s pontifical universities, diplomats and journalists.
The Rome Seminar is marked by significant moments of prayer, reflection and fellowship: this year, whether at Subiaco, where we considered how to carry founding charisms forward to the next generation, or when gathered for Mass in the rooms of St. Ignatius, where Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer (soon-to-be cardinal) preached about being light and salt in our world, or at the tomb of Peter, or simply in our little chapel at The Lay Centre, prayer and reflection were central to the seminar.
We heard Pope Francis challenge us at the papal audience “to live a full and authentic existence and not to settle for a life of bland mediocrity.”
The pace of the seminar is intense, but the fruit it has born is encouraging, and what I saw in this 14th Rome Seminar were people with a real commitment to promote a culture of excellence at their various colleges and universities.
Donna Orsuto is the director of The Lay Centre and a professor of spirituality at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
