Chiara Lubich: An Idea of the University

Abstract

The article analyzes the actual situation of European University students and tries to understand how Newman would have reacted to it. The dialogue with some essential insights of the recently beatified cardinal brings him to Chiara Lubich who shares with Newman some very similar intuitions on the task of a University. Founded in 2007 on the basis of the charism of unity recognized by the Church, the Sophia University Institute Sophia in Tuscany (Italy) as the very last initiative of her long life as the initiator of the Focolare Movement, Chiara Lubich wanted it to be an interdisciplinary Institute amalgamating in harmony life and studies. After now more than two years of its life, the author addresses a first “state of the union” in dialogue with Newman and Lubich.