Católica promotes reflection on the calling of friendship

The Católica Doctoral School organised a meeting under the motto ‘Quale umano cerchiamo?’, bringing together academics and students to reflect on the vocation of friendship and the responsibility of each individual towards the human relationship with the other around them.

The event was attended by Donatella Abignente, Professor Emeritus of the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of Southern Italy, who highlighted friendship as the center of human life and the foundation of a moral theology based on encounter. “The other challenges us with their presence,” she said, stressing the importance of mutual recognition and simultaneity in building human relationships.

The Rector of the Portuguese Catholic University, Isabel Capeloa Gil, evoked authors such as Proust and the philosophical and biblical tradition to reinforce the timeliness of the question of which human being we are looking for. “Contemporary challenges demand renewed attention to the individual and their dignity,” she said.

The meeting reinforced the idea that knowledge and freedom are fully realized in responsibility and in responding to others, in an experience of communion which, as Donatella Abignente recalled, “is also the way God makes himself known: as a friend”.

Concluding, D,Rui Valério, Chancellor of the UCP, recalled the person and teaching of Fr. Sergio Bastianel, sj, and expressed his gratitude for all that he had learned from him.