People on the Move

The Pastoral Care of Foreign Students:

Evangelization, Dialogue and Proclamation

 

 

Archbishop J. Michael Miller, C.S.B.

Secretary

Congregation for Catholic Education

 

 

Introduction

Thank you for the kind invitation to be with you this morning at the II World Congress for the Pastoral Care of Foreign Students sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples. I welcome this timely initiative both as a member of the board of this Pontifical Council and as secretary for the Congregation for Catholic Education. For both dicasteries the pastoral care of foreign students is a matter of exceptional concern today, and this Congress, I am sure, will help to make better known the challenges of serving them, to share pastoral experiences, and to set out guidelines that will contribute to setting the agenda for the years ahead.

At the outset I must confess that this is an area in which I enjoy little expertise. Certainly I have had the experience – as have many of you – of being a foreign student many years ago. As a young Canadian, I studied at length in the United States and Italy, and for shorter periods in Germany, Mexico and Switzerland. The religious community to which I belong, the Basilian Fathers – a small group of French origin; we are three hundred members – has the education of youth as its primary apostolate. Even so, since the 1930’s we have taken an active pastoral interest in migrants, especially in south Texas, in the corridor southwest of Houston where Hispanic migrants, for many years, were unwelcome in some parishes. For several summers, during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I taught catechism and bible study in these mission communities, many of which have since become suburban parishes of the fourth largest city in the United States. Later in life, I was fortunate enough to be president of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, a Catholic institution whose student body was composed of 10% international students and another 40% the sons and daughters of recent Hispanic and Asian immigrants.

Now that my modest credentials have been exposed, we can turn to the particular matter at hand. Archbishop Marchetto asked me to speak on the pastoral care of foreign students in light of the Pontifical Council’s landmark Instruction Erga migrantes caritas Christi (2004), and I will certainly honor that request. I have, however, slightly changed the wording of the title in your program to that of “The Pastoral Care of Foreign Students: Evangelization, Dialogue and Proclamation.” Narrowing this topic is necessary, so I will deal primarily with the pastoral care in campus ministries of university-age international or “foreign” students in tertiary institutions of higher education, whether Catholic- or State-sponsored.

A specific focus on university students can be justified, because universities, despite their relatively small enrollment compared to the number of young people in the same age cohort, exercise an influence on society and the Church far greater than their limited numbers would suggest. On these students depend “to a great extent the future of the Church and that of society.”[1] Since the foundation of the first universities in the Europe of the middle ages, an international dimension has been part of their tradition. Students frequently traveled to other countries for instruction, while professors did likewise to conduct their scholarly pursuits. Today, the Church’s pastoral care of international students takes place in many different structural arrangements: university chaplaincies, campus ministries, Newman clubs and university parishes.

After some introductory observations on the general situation of international students and the ChurchÂ’s response to their pastoral care, I will describe the foundation of a new thrust in pastoral care suggested by the Pontifical CouncilÂ’s Instruction and then suggest how such care can foster the ChurchÂ’s mission, ad intra and ad extra, by dialogue and proclamation.

 

I. Current Situation of International Students

 

You have already heard and discussed at length the challenge presented by the enormous number of students – in the range of two million and “whose numbers increase every year in the world”[2] – who attend university outside their own countries. Despite a slight decline since the disaster of 9/11, the United States still hosts nearly 30% of the total number of foreign students.[3] For its part, Europe, with its Erasmus program and now the implementation of the Bologna Process – which is attempting to harmonize the basic university academic structures of its forty member nations – wants to attract a greater share of international students as well as to facilitate the movement of students and faculty from one nation to another.[4] At the international level, student and faculty exchanges, research collaboration, and foreign language and area study programs are becoming ever more widespread.

Unlike the tragedy of emigration spurred by economic, cultural, political or religious reasons, the overwhelming majority of foreign students are not refugees but “volunteers” who leave their home countries to seek study and research opportunities abroad. A large number of these are graduate students who already have a first-level university degree. This flow of students is now being reinforced by the driving forces of globalization. Some eventually settle down in their host country; this often presents a problem because it results in a brain drain of highly qualified manpower from the sending country. Most students, however, are abroad temporarily and return to their homes after completing their studies. More to the point for us, foreign students bring to their host countries a variety of often unfamiliar political, cultural and religious traditions which the local Church must take into account in providing for their pastoral care.

 

II. The ChurchÂ’s Response to the Contemporary Situation

 

In light of the “signs of the times,” pastoral care is called to pay particular attention to the challenge presented by foreign students.[5] The Church must follow her sons and daughters to the university, especially those who find themselves far away from home; she sees in them the face of Christ who was exiled to a foreign land and spent his public ministry on the move, a man with no place to lay his head (cf. Mt 8:20; Lk 9:58). Foreign students bear witness to the Church’s pilgrim nature, reminding us that we are all temporary residents in hac lacrimarum valle. In the words of Mary Ann Glendon, the Church needs to find ways to accompany university students “on that dangerous journey toward a mature Christianity”[6] – difficult enough in any situation but even more so when students come from another culture.

 

1. Welcoming the Challenge

 

The Church’s care for her university students cannot remain “on the fringe of ordinary pastoral action.”[7] Indeed, the local bishop is responsible for all university students in his diocese and is to give them his earnest attention on account of their special needs and milieu.[8] He should do so in collaboration with the Episcopal conference, as the conference should work with its counterparts around the world, especially with those in countries which send many students abroad. Because many universities have foreign faculty and staff, their assistance should also be sought in formulating pastoral programs for international students.

Pope John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae (1990) contains an important passage on the role of pastoral care in the university community – and, I would add, especially for its foreign students:

Pastoral ministry is that activity of the university which offers the members of the university community an opportunity to integrate religious and moral principles with their academic study and non-academic activities, thus integrating faith with life. It is part of the mission of the Church within the university, and is also a constitutive element of a Catholic university itself, both in its structure and in its life.[9]

The pastoral care of foreign students should, therefore, be integrated into the overall pastoral strategy of every local Church where a university is located. More specifically, this attention to students from abroad should be a concern of every campus ministry. A university chaplaincy or parish is not only a place of worship, counseling, community and outreach but also of doctrinal and catechetical formation. In his homily for the Jubilee of University Professors, Pope John Paul reminded them of the indispensable role played by campus ministry in fostering authentic university life:

At the heart of such pastoral activity are university chaplaincy centers where teachers, students and staff find support and help for their Christian lives. As significant places in the University setting, they nourish the commitment of each individual according to the forms and ways suggested by the university context: they are places of the spirit, gymnasiums for the Christian virtues, open and inviting houses, dynamic centers which encourage the Christian animation of culture in respectful and honest dialogue.[10]

The university is a “cultural laboratory” where things often happen before they spread to society at large. Whatever takes place here is like work done in a laboratory, intended to be carried outside.[11] This experimental dimension of higher education is an additional reason for the Church’s special concern for foreign students. How they are dealt with on campus is vitally important to the Church’s future in both the host and sending countries. In the university is developed “a culture that can have a positive influence on the ecclesial community and on society”[12] – or a negative one. A campus ministry’s way of dealing with international students equips them to contribute to the Church and society as mature lay men and women.

While there are certainly many exceptions, for the most part, university chaplaincies provide what the Instruction refers to as “mono-ethnic” pastoral care.[13] Without denying the particular needs of foreign students, campus ministers are often reluctant to address their distinctiveness, for fear of impeding the students’ acceptance by the majority religious culture.

Perhaps they try to ignore the difference they represent. I do not think that university chaplaincies isolate their international students to second-rate worship spaces or inconvenient times for liturgical celebration – practices sometimes found in parish communities. On the other hand, even good campus ministers might be tempted to cover over differences with the rhetoric of “here we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.” While this statement is undoubtedly true, it can be used as a way of ignoring the Church’s catholicity.[14]

Sometimes pastoral care is motivated by the silent fear that the diversity brought by international students will destroy the one mind and one heart of an ecclesial community. Yet it is essential to recall that these young men and women bring a richness to be welcomed, enabling the community to appreciate that diversity and unity are complementary, and not contradictory.

Increasingly, however, a shift is taking place. University chaplaincies with large numbers of foreign students are now taking steps, especially in the area of worship, to make students from abroad feel more at home. They celebrate the Eucharist, or at least proclaim some of the biblical readings in foreign languages, and they honor popular religious devotions cherished by different groups of international students.[15] But in other areas their needs are still often neglected: areas such as providing opportunities in retreats for them to meet together or enabling them to sponsor service projects and social justice initiatives targeted at their fellow citizens.[16] In general, the emphasis in campus ministries is on assimilating all students into the religious traditions and culture of the host country. Consequently, the “integrated pastoral care” called for by the Instruction for these temporary migrants is not provided. More often than not, I believe, this is a sin of omission, done through ignorance of the need to provide special attention to foreign students rather than from ethnocentricity or from any firmly held ideological position.

In the future, chaplains and campus ministers must be more attentive to the presence and unique contributions of the international students entrusted to them. How well a given local Church handles this pastoral challenge is undoubtedly an accurate indicator of the extent to which it has in place adequate structures of pastoral care for the full range of people on the move.

 

2. Theological Considerations

 

Now I would like to draw to your attention three specific theological considerations that deserve the attention of those responsible for the pastoral care of foreign students in a university setting. To be sure, these considerations are by no means unique to campus ministries, but they do have a special place there. I am referring to communion, catholicity and solidarity. LetÂ’s look at each one in turn.

 

2.1 Communion

In the Instruction we read that “the passage from monocultural to multicultural societies can be a sign of the living presence of God in history and in the community of mankind, for it offers a providential opportunity for the fulfillment of God’s plan for a universal communion.”[17] A university chaplaincy which serves foreign students is a particular instance of such a multicultural society. As Pope John Paul II expressed it, “To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world’s deepest yearnings.”[18] If an ecclesial community is rooted in an ecclesiology of communion, it will appreciate that its unity is enriched by students from different cultures and ethnicities.

Indeed, foreign students are “a visible sign and an effective reminder of that universality which is a constituent element of the Catholic Church.”[19] They sacramentalize the Church’s unity in catholicity in institutions of higher education, making visible her universal communion. Campus ministers have the pastoral task of “bringing the values of each one into communion.”[20] Pastoral care will, therefore, be built upon a profound appreciation of the mystery of Pentecost where the unity of the one faith at the same time affirmed the inherent value of different languages and cultures. In chaplaincies with significant numbers of students from abroad the whole community can come to recognize that it belongs to the universal Church, which goes beyond the narrow particularity of local ecclesial experience. The presence of foreign students is a call to a deeper communion which enables the Church to bear more transparent witness to her reality as “the universal sacrament of salvation.”[21]

 Such students are gifts to the community which receives them and should be valued as such. They help the university community to realize that from her beginning, the Church has been marked “by a great diversity which comes from both the variety of GodÂ’s gifts and the diversity of those who receive them.”[22]

 

2.2 Catholicity

Among the primary gifts that foreign students bring to a university chaplaincy is a strengthening of that community’s sense of catholicity. They invite it “to live again the fraternity of Pentecost, when differences are harmonized by the Spirit.”[23] Like other migrants, foreign students offer communities

the opportunity to verify their catholicity, which consists not only in welcoming different ethnic groups, but above all in creating communion with them and among them. Ethnic and cultural pluralism in the Church is not just something to be tolerated because it is transitory, it is a structural dimension.[24]

A pastoral care rooted in fostering catholicity is accompanied by a great respect for the legitimate diversity of the spiritual and cultural heritage which foreign students bring to the university community. Moreover, it also confronts any traces of a hostile or xenophobic attitude among its members, whether from the host country or from abroad. Campus ministry welcomes others in their diversity, looking to Pentecost for its inspiration. “The sign of Pentecost – the new community that speaks all languages and unites all peoples into one people, in one family of God –, this sign has become a reality.”[25] The different languages and cultures of international students turn Babel on its head and express the Church’s catholicity.

Besides this horizontal dimension of catholicity – the gathering of foreign and host-country students into unity – there is also a vertical dimension. Only when a university ecclesial community raises its eyes to God, by opening itself to him, can it be truly united in its diversity. For this reason, prayer together, especially the Eucharist, is the highest expression of catholicity.

As a sidebar, I would like to say something about a particular virtue necessary for ensuring authentic ecclesial communion between foreign and host-country students. That virtue is respect; and it differs from tolerance. Tolerance can mean putting up quietly with differences, perhaps even with the silent hope that they will eventually disappear. We tolerate what we have to. While the value of tolerance should not be underestimated, especially in the spheres of politics, culture and world religions, it is not the basis for ecclesial communion. Tolerance is not enough. What is needed is respect for the cultural identity of each member of the community.[26]

Respect, however, entails valuing the otherÂ’s differences in their own right. Such differences enrich ecclesial communion. To respect the foreign student, therefore, means that their differences are welcomed as having intrinsic value, not as deviations from the norm.[27]

 

2.3 Solidarity

Besides its sources in communion and catholicity, the pastoral care of foreign students must have a solid formation in solidarity. Solidarity is not merely “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people”[28] but a moral virtue directed toward the common good in specific situations. A pastoral concern for solidarity should be based on the conviction that “the Church’s social doctrine is an integral part of her evangelizing ministry.”^[29] Within university chaplaincies solidarity is expressed by promoting an authentic “culture of welcome,” extending to foreign students what St. Paul admonished: “Welcome one another then, as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Rom 15:7).[30] Among the principal needs of international students is the offer of hospitality to alleviate their loneliness and disconnectedness.

The Instruction makes an intriguing suggestion to institutionalize this culture of welcome and solidarity in a local ChurchÂ’s pastoral plan:

In the Church itself, one could examine the possibility of instituting a suitable form of non-ordained ministry of welcome with the task of approaching migrants and refugees and introducing them gradually into the civil and the ecclesial community or helping them in view of a possible return to their home country. In this context particular attention would need to be paid to foreign students.[31]

If approved, such a ministry of welcome in a university chaplaincy could make an enormous contribution to its well-being.

Pastoral care which fosters solidarity also ensures that opportunities are provided for both host-country and foreign students to put the ChurchÂ’s social doctrine into practice through concrete initiatives. Those responsible for studentsÂ’ pastoral care should urge them to express their solidarity through a wide variety of volunteer and service projects. Undoubtedly special attention will be paid to the rights of minorities and questions of justice dealing with migrants, refugees and other people on the move: their working conditions, legal problems with bureaucracies, economic exploitation, and the difficulties met by foreign students, especially those in dire financial straits. Such undertakings, if they are to be more than short-term social work projects, should be linked to the Gospel and the ChurchÂ’s mission of evangelization. To that mission we now turn.

           

III. Foreign Students and Evangelization

In ecclesial documents the term “evangelization” can have both a broad and a narrow meaning. In the wide sense, it means “bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new.”[32] In university circles “evangelization” is frequently used in this broader sense, as when they speak of the evangelization of cultures[33] or the evangelizing mission of the Catholic university.[34] Because of their integral relationship to the university, chaplaincies, too, share in this task of evangelization in ways appropriate to their particular mission.

“Evangelization,” however, also has a narrower, and probably more common, sense: the “clear and unequivocal proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ.”[35] While this latter meaning has become almost synonymous with evangelization, Pope Paul VI observed that it was “only one aspect of evangelization.”^[36] Nevertheless, evangelization the core and summit of evangelization is the “clear proclamation that in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all as a gift of God’s kindness and mercy.”[37]

The task of evangelization is one complex reality, even though it is “exercised in different ways according to the conditions in which mission unfolds.”[38] All Christians are called to be evangelizers in multiple ways according to the various circumstances in which they find themselves. The way of fulfilling the Church’s mission depends upon the specific circumstances of each individual and each local community. It always implies sensitivity to the social, cultural, religious and political aspects of the situation, as well as attentiveness to the “signs of the times” through which the Spirit of God guides his people.[39] Thus, the pastoral care of foreign students will include bringing to bear all the elements of evangelization that characterized Jesus’ own mission: silence, action, prayer, dialogue and the explicit proclamation of the Good News.

Campus ministries which welcome foreign students can be vigorous centers of an evangelization that embraces both dialogue and proclamation. The former is evangelization in the broader sense, and the latter in the stricter sense. Dialogue and proclamation are not opposed. Rather, “dialogue contains an element of proclamation insofar as it includes witness to one’s own beliefs, while proclamation can never be an imposition of the truth but must always be conducted in a spirit of dialogue.”[40] I will now turn to a discussion of dialogue and proclamation as two components of the Church’s one evangelizing mission.

 

IV. Chaplaincies of Dialogue

Campus ministries with a significant multiethnic and multicultural presence must develop a kind of pastoral care which fosters dialogue inside the community as well as outside with other believers.

 

1.  Dialogue within Campus Ministry

The universityÂ’s cultural plurality invites a chaplaincyÂ’s students to dialogue with one another. The capacity for dialogue is rooted in the nature and dignity of the person. Dialogue is not simply an exchange of ideas, but an interpersonal exchange of gifts. Thus it is necessary to put aside the remnants of any antagonism and move to a situation where each one, regardless of origin, recognizes the other as a partner in building up the local Eucharistic community.

Insofar as a chaplaincy is a community of dialogue, the first goal of its pastoral care in this area is to foster this dialogue of life and witness as a specific attitude and guide to its action. Such dialogue “implies concern, respect, and hospitality toward the other. It leaves room for the other person’s identity, modes of expression, and values. Dialogue is thus the norm and necessary manner of every form of Christian mission, as well as of every aspect of it, whether one speaks of simple presence and witness, service, or direct proclamation.”[41]

Enriched by the presence of students from different cultures and ways of living the Gospel, campus ministries can be schools of dialogue where its value is taught and practiced in the local community. Inevitably issues arise in multicultural chaplaincies, whether seemingly trivial or of great import, which need resolution. The opportunity to learn the virtues of true dialogue is an occasion for spiritual maturity which recognizes the need for openness to the other, the spirit of welcome and the discipline of listening: “that each party should explain its thoughts, but should also listen to the explanation of the situation such as the other party describes it, sincerely feels it, with the real problems which are proper to the party, its rights, the injustices of which it is aware, the reasonable solutions which it suggests.”[42] In other words, fruitful dialogue begins with trying to understand others as they wish to be understood. Moreover, particularly in multicultural and multiethnic communities, each student should accept the situation of difference rather than pretending to ignore it. Dialogue, then, demands clear sightedness, honesty, courage and charity. It puts aside prejudice and point-scoring, is willing to learn, and grants freedom to the other to present his or her convictions.

If host-country students and their colleagues from abroad can learn to participate in such a dialogue among themselves, then they will be well positioned for dialogue with those outside the ecclesial community. Their dialogue of life is neither passive nor mere co-existence but a desire for authentic interpersonal relations.[43] It creates bridges of understanding and is linked to a spirituality of communion, one which enables students to appreciate what is positive in their colleagues, to welcome that and prize those traits as gifts from God.[44]

Dialogue “ad extra”

Among today’s most pressing challenges, and one felt particularly on university campuses, is that posed by the increasing presence of adherents of non-Christian students who faithfully adhere to their beliefs. Today interreligious contact and dialogue is a normal part of university life in most parts of the world. “From the Christian point of view,” wrote the late John Paul II, “interreligious dialogue is more than a way of fostering mutual knowledge and enrichment; it is a part of the Church’s evangelizing mission.”[45]

Campus ministry, while it is directed primarily to Catholic foreign students, should also reach out to foreign students of other religions, encouraging “their initiatives for reflection and prayer in accordance with their own beliefs.”[46] Chaplaincies should encourage a spirit of welcome, cooperation in joint projects and, on occasion, discussions about matters of belief. No one way of dialogue is exclusive, since each one is a response to the Spirit.

The pastoral care of foreign and host-country students, therefore, actively fosters a “dialogue of works.” This entails collaboration in initiatives of a humanitarian, social or cultural nature between Catholics and non-Catholics, including non-Christians. Since work for justice and peace is integral to the Church’s mission of evangelization, much is to be gained by cooperating in common efforts. Such a dialogue of works for integral human development has been forcefully proposed in recent Church documents on interreligious dialogue.[47]

Pastors working with foreign students should understand that these young men and women, precisely because of their background, can also be particularly valuable “pontiffs” in campus interreligious dialogue on a level that goes beyond mutual cooperation. More readily than most host-country students, they can build bridges which take up matters directly related to the religious heritage of non-Christians. In this way foreign students in university chaplaincies can play a role in the plan laid out by Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of his Petrine ministry: “I assure you that the Church wants to continue building bridges of friendship with the followers of all religions, in order to seek the true good of every person and of society as a whole.”[48]

Certainly students from abroad are not “experts,” and they are unable to take part in the kind of interreligious dialogue reserved to specialists in the field. Nonetheless, because they often share the same cultural background, they have many opportunities to engage their fellow non-Christian students.

Pastoral care in such cases should provide occasions for students to receive a solid formation about other religious traditions so that they will be effective dialogue partners.  Particular attention should be paid to ensuring that international students do not fall prey to the soft religious indifferentism found on many university campuses. Such religious relativism, “which leads to the belief that ‘one religionÂ’ is as good as another,”[49] cannot sustain a genuine dialogue in which partners take the otherÂ’s truth claims seriously. Indeed, pastoral care should try to ensure that all students avoid falling prey to the common assumption of post-modern culture that “dogmatizes relativism and declares ‘non-interferenceÂ’ in the field of Truth (but which essentially ignores the every existence of Truth). In this way, authentic dialogue with those who do not believe becomes a challenge to todayÂ’s amorphous culture of pragmatic relativism.”[50]

 

V. Proclaiming the Gospel

Despite the positive value of the different forms interreligious dialogue, the pastoral ministers must also prepare foreign students for the task of enthusiastically proclaiming the Gospel to their peers, of bringing the Good News to the heart of the university community. “No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.”[51] Certainly the students’ witness of integrity and charity is essential to fruitful evangelization, often opening the way to conversion. Nevertheless, their witness cannot always remain quiet and invisible. The duty of proclamation has not been replaced by the time of dialogue. In the words of the Instruction,

we ourselves must never renounce the proclamation – either explicit or implicit, according to circumstances – of salvation in Christ, the only Mediator between God and man. The whole work of the Church moves in this direction in such a way that neither fraternal dialogue nor the exchange and sharing of “human” values can diminish the Church’s commitment to evangelization.[52]

There are occasions when students must vigorously proclaim the Gospel. In order to do so effectively, however, they must be nurtured by a community of prayer and contemplation centered on the Eucharist. Speaking with God must always accompany speaking about God.

 

1. Proclamation “ad universitatem”

Pastoral care workers in the university must provoke the students entrusted to them to proclaim the Gospel explicitly to their colleagues on campus. Because of their unfamiliarity with the local culture, foreign students in particular might think that their faith is a private affair, thereby refraining from giving explicit witness to their faith in Christ.[53] They cannot ignore, however, that “the Church is concerned with proclaiming the Gospel to all those, within the university, to whom it is still unknown and who are ready to receive it in freedom.”[54]

Shouting the Gospel from the rooftops includes the tough issues: proclaiming the transcendent value of human life, the inherent dignity of sexuality within marriage, the existence of moral absolutes and the promotion of social justice and peace. Even so, the primary way in which foreign students, like their host-country colleagues, can evangelize their peers is through their clear presentation and articulate defense of Gospel values in the classroom, research and other projects. Here I would like to say just a word about two of these values: fostering the passion for truth and acknowledging the harmony of faith and reason.

According to Pope Benedict XVI, the major challenge to the Church of the twenty-first century is the massive presence in our society and culture of a relativism that, by not acknowledging anything as definitive, only has as its ultimate measure the “I” itself, with its tastes and which, with the appearance of freedom, becomes for each one a prison, as it separates from others, making each one find himself shut in within his own “I.” In such a relativist horizon an authentic education is not possible.[55]

Guided by solid pastoral care, students must confront such relativism with a firm conviction about truth: that it can be pursued, and, to a limited but real extent, attained by the human mind and communicated to others. Pope John Paul II frequently reminded students that “truth is the light of the human intellect. If the intellect seeks, from youth onwards, to know reality in its different dimensions, it does so in order to possess the truth: in order to live the truth.[56]

Indeed, pastoral ministers will help students to appreciate the truth in every field of genuinely human endeavor, loving truth wherever it may be found in the material or spiritual world. Students, then, will take “the truth as their constant point of reference – their pole star.”[57] To proclaim truth in face of what Cardinal Ratzinger called the fashionable “dictatorship of relativism”[58] is a service rendered by every student whose pastoral care has enabled him or her to grasp that, without this fundamental value, freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished.[59]

Through homilies, short courses for students, formal and informal discussion groups and other means, university pastoral ministers will help students, especially those who come from religious backgrounds in which philosophy was given little attention, to bring a Catholic understanding of the harmony between faith and reason to their academic endeavors. Campus ministers should lead students to appreciate the profound structural connection between faith and reason, “the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”[60] Like all university students, those from abroad should be guided to develop a Catholic world view through which they can proclaim Christ in their specific academic environment.

 

2. Mission “ad gentes”

University chaplaincies and campus ministries must, I think, be animated by what the Holy Father has called “a holy restlessness: a restlessness to bring to everyone the gift of faith, of friendship with Christ. Truly, the love and friendship of God is given to us so that it might also be shared with others.”[61]

In today’s universities we can see a progressive process of de-Christianization and a worrisome loss of the essential human values. Far too many students fail to find in the Gospel a convincing response to the question: how am I to live? Yet, we believe that everyone needs the Gospel. It is destined for all and is not to be confined only a small circle of the elite. For this reason, the whole Church, perhaps with students in the vanguard, is obliged to look for new ways of bringing the Gospel to all men and women.[62] The challenge is to make students protagonists of this proclamation – a proclamation that goes beyond the student-to-student ministry of the campus to embrace the whole world.

Meaningful pastoral programs will help both foreign and host-country students to understand the Church’s compelling duty to announce that Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6) in whom people find salvation. Indeed, “missionary evangelization is the primary service which the Church can render to every individual and to all humanity in the modern world.”[63] Chaplaincy programs ought to include sound catechesis, especially in ecclesiology and Christology, an appreciation of the Spirit as the principal agent of evangelization, and the recognition of the semina Verbi found in different cultures and religions.[64] The presence of foreign students in a university community lends itself especially to dispelling any attitude of superiority among those who might suppose “that a particular culture is linked with the Christian message and is to be imposed on converts.”[65] Not only will foreign students be prepared to return home more committed to the mission ad gentes but host-country students will be stimulated to be more active protagonists of the new evangelization.

 

Conclusion

The appropriate pastoral care of foreign students in the university remains a challenge for all those selflessly dedicated to this ministry. Above all, you should welcome the presence of students from abroad as GodÂ’s messengers who surprise and sometimes interrupt the logic of campus ministry as it has been traditionally carried out.[66] Hence, you are called to develop and integrate new initiatives for students from abroad into the pastoral programs of the local Church. At the same time campus ministers must be prepared to address the specific needs of international students, creating communities of dialogue and proclamation where both foreign and host-country students are prepared for the thrilling yet demanding responsibility of claiming the university milieu for Christ and the Gospel. More than waiting for international students to come to you, as pastoral workers you must act like good shepherds who search out those who are lost and confused. You must be especially attentive to reaching out to those coming from abroad by creating a multicultural and multiethnic community of welcome, communion, catholicity and dialogue, where the Eucharist is its beating heart and the source of its evangelizing activity of dialogue and proclamation.

In her pastoral care of foreign students the Church can readily test her fidelity to the LordÂ’s command to welcome the stranger.  If she is obedient to his command in this sphere, a solid foundation is laid for a future in which the next generation will courageously proclaim the name of Jesus Christ and the freedom of the Gospel “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).