Pope Francis has created the Universidad del Sentido (University of Meaning), a new autonomous university that is headquartered in the Vatican and managed by the international educational organization, Scholas Occurrentes. 

“Scholas as a community that educates, as an intuition that’s growing, is opening the doors of the University of Meaning with students from all realities, languages and creeds, so that nobody is left out when what is being taught is no less than life itself,” the pope wrote in a statement.

Its creation comes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that the pope said had seen culture lose its vitality. “To educate is to seek the meaning of things,” he added.

The university’s manifesto was developed with the collaboration of international intellectuals including Professor Mpho Tshivhase of Pretoria University, Professor Stefania Travagnin of London University, Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne of Columbia University, and Professor Diane Moore of Harvard University.

They conceived of the university as a global higher-education institution responding to the need to center education around the person as an individual and the community as an expression of plurality.

Pope Francis created Scholas in 2013, as a multicultural educational movement helping young people around the world to search for meaning in their lives. Since 2015, it has worked with a network of universities to develop educational content, as well as research and teacher training. 

The University of Meaning was formally established on August 15.

Image: Reuters