– Marco Carvalho
The University of Saint Joseph and the Catholic Institute of Ljubljana will exchange students and teachers in the near future. The Slovenian institution, the first of its kind in the former Yugoslavian Republic, will also cooperate with the Macau Ricci Institute (MRI), the Auxiliary Bishop of Ljubljana told O Clarim. Anton Jamnik was one of the concelebrants of the Mass that was held last Saturday before the Ruins of Saint Paul. A professor of philosophy and ethics at Slovenia’s largest university, Bishop Jamnik was also one of the main speakers of the 2019 edition of MRI’s symposium, where he addressed the importance of contemplation and meditation in a globalized world.
Your Eminence, you took part in the Symposium organized by the Macau Ricci Institute, which debated themes such as contemplation and martyrdom. In a certain sense, the Catholic Church abandoned this tradition of contemplation and we don’t tend to look at martyrs as a thing of today. How do contemplation and martyrdom go together? And how important are they for the future of the Church?
I want to congratulate the Macau Ricci Institute for its 20th anniversary. The topics on analysis in this conference were of utmost importance for our life, because if we look at history, contemplation and meditation were very important in the beginning of Christianity and it remained of great importance for many, many centuries.
We know that our history, our roots are in martyrdom, but martyrdom is not a thing of the past. We still have martyrs today. In our ordinary life we have to sacrifice ourselves: in the companies we work for, the schools were we teach or the universities we learn. The main question we have to make to ourselves today is how can we speak heart-to-heart, “cor ad cor loquitor,” as was the main mission of Saint John Henry Newman. If we are full of freedom, if our heart is full of joy and full of hope, we can be missionaries for other people, for our neighbors, no matter what their religions or their philosophies are. This way we can do something for our neighbors and for other people.
In today’s world, meditation and contemplation are still very important in our ordinary life because – and I had the chance to talk about this in the symposium – the malaise of our globalized world, especially in Europe and the United States, is to have money, money, money, to have power and to have pleasure. What can we do to change this? Well, first we need to be aware that the main miracle is the miracle of life. We should be a gift to other people. Then, we should be able to nurture positive thinking and to act in a positive way in our society, not only with our own family, but also our neighbors or even the village or the city where we live in. We should also be able to show respect: we have to respect Nature, we have to respect those who are [in a] worse [situation] than we are, like the refugees.
I met pope Francis a few weeks ago and I had met him also last year and in both occasions he told me: “Everybody was made in the image of the Lord.” So, we have to respect the other religions: Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Confucionists, no matter what their religion is.
In an age of individualism, to be in a community, to be together is very, very important. That means we are not alone anymore. Even in a spiritual sense, it is important to be together. When we are bound together, we are also closer to the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
We live, as you were saying, in a business-oriented world. The purpose of most is to make money. But even in a business-oriented world, how can contemplation help to make more informed, better-balanced decisions? We are living in a world where people have lost the ability to think by themselves, to stop when they should… How could contemplation help to build a more ethical world?
In the beginning of the month I have been in Seoul, visiting Korea’s Catholic University. A few weeks ago, I went to Luxembourg when archbishop Jean Claude Hollerich was nominated a cardinal. What was my experience in these two places? In Luxembourg, you will find banks everywhere. It’s a vibrating economy right in the heart of the European Union. In Seoul, economy is growing and the thing we see is people rushing by to get more money, working and working. We see the exact same thing in Europe and the United States. What was my personal experience? I remember that in Luxembourg you will find a lot of very nice buildings, but people almost don’t have space around those building because space, in Luxembourg, means money and money means power. I felt like Mother Theresa when she wrote: “I am thirsty. I am thirsty.” The impression that I had was that everybody was thirsty. What can we do to change this? When I visit some very big managers and executives in Slovenia, they like to talk about spirituality, about religion. They often ask me to pray for them. They don’t usually go to Mass, but they keep asking me to pray for them. My personal vision is that everybody, every single one of us has this hunger for infinity. We have to help each other to discover how we can answer this hunger. Our mission, as you said, is to help other people to find a way to nurture their spiritual life. Spiritual life is a crucial aspect of our own lives, whether one be a businessmen, a professor, a member of an academy. Without spiritual life, it is not possible – as Cardinal Newman wrote – “cor ad cor loquitor,” it is not possible for the heart to speak to heart. This is my vision, this is my hope. I am well aware that God is working. And it is a God of surprises.
You have been one of the strongest promoters of the first Catholic University in Slovenia. If I am not wrong, this project started more that ten years ago. How is it going?
Slovenia is a former republic of communist Yugoslavia. It is located in the west part of what used to be Yugoslavia, near Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Hungary. The influence of the countries that made the heart of Europe was very strong in Slovenia. In former Yugoslavia it was impossible to open private schools: there were no private primary and secondary schools and there were, of course, no private universities. The Government feared the influence of private schools. Now, when Slovenia became an independent country, in 1991, we opened primary schools and then secondary schools. Now we are working in the project of a Catholic university. We are very grateful to the University of Saint Joseph, to the rector of the University and we are also working with father Stephan Rothlin, the director of the Ricci Institute. He was in Lugano also. For us, it is now very important to settle the Catholic University. We have started with one of the faculties and we will add another one next year. We hope that in the next few years we can have three faculties, three departments, so we can ask the Slovenian Government to formally become a university.
Now, we are still formally a Catholic Institute. We are working step-by-step to fulfill so that we can achieve that. We have students, cooperation agreements with European institutions and now we have also cooperation mechanisms both with the Macau Ricci Institute, the University of Saint Joseph and another universities around the world, in places like the United States. China is for us absolutely important, because I have many friends here and I am aware that China has a very substantial mission around the world, not only in a cultural sense, but also a religious one. This mission is a challenge for Europe and for the United States.
Why did we decide to establish a Catholic University? In my opinion, a Catholic University is of utmost importance for democracy. It is important to respect the plurality of our civil society. In ex-Yugoslavia there was no plurality. There was no freedom of opinion. The only opinion that mattered was the one from the Government and the Communist Party. Nobody else mattered. Now, we live in a plural country and we are trying to do something for our students, by teaching them to respect human rights and to respect the law. These are the three pillars of democracy. Almost eighty percent of the population in Slovenia see themselves as Catholics, but the ones that practice, that go to Church every Sunday amount to about 11 or 12 per cent. Nevertheless, if you ask them, everybody will tell you that they are Catholic. The same happens in Italy and in Spain. One very important step that we have to take is a step that takes us from tradition – I am Catholic, my family is Catholic, my grandfather is Catholic – to a personal option that binds us to Jesus Christ, so we can be true witnesses to the Lord.
How can the University reinforce Slovenian catholicity? How can it help bring people back to the Church?
Yes. That is another challenge. Pope Francis has emphasized quite a few times that we, the Church, we cannot wait for the faithful to come to our offices. We have to reach to the people; we have to reach the younger generations. Our mission is to respect the persons, to respect their decisions, their freedom. Someone could have a very different position, but through good knowledge, through education I will be able to understand and to respect that different position. In former Yugoslavia there was no education at all about religion or about ethics. Now, we are free to educate about religion: not only about Christianity, but also about Judaism, about Islamism and other religious traditions, such as Buddhism, Taoism or Confucianism. This is a good way to make people understand about religion, about what it means to be Christian. We will inform them and they decide. No one will decide for them. In my opinion, the mission of Universities now is precisely that one.
I am still a professor at Slovenia’s state university. As bishops we have no problem. The University of Ljubljana has more than 40 000 students and we have good cooperation, but sometimes people ask me: “Why do we need a Catholic University”? Because, I tell them, we need plurality. This is a challenge for both the state University and for the Catholic University. The mission is to form and educate at a personal level, but community, once again, is very important.
One of the most important areas of our mission is also art: to organize concerts, different exhibitions. Through this, through art, we art teaching our students another language. It is a universal language that everyone speaks in our modern society.
How can the University of Saint Joseph and the Catholic Institute of Slovenia help each other to grow?
Well, we have been in talks for the last two years. I met the rector of the University of Saint Joseph two years ago and I have met him here once again. We had the opportunity to discuss this matter and we agree to exchange professors and students. Maybe in the beginning this exchange will only involve a few of them. I have also discussed with Father Stephan Rothlin the possibility of an agreement with the Macau Ricci Institute. The Faculty of Theology of the Catholic Institute of Ljubljana and the Institute will interact through the Internet. For most of our students, it would be very expensive to come here and it’s not easy also to go from Macau to Ljubljana, but our students can interact with local students and local researchers through the Internet. It’s a good and inexpensive way to cooperate. I am grateful to the University of Saint Joseph and to the Macau Ricci Institute. They will both start to cooperate with us very soon, probably in the beginning of next year. Father Peter Stilwell promised me he would come to Ljubljana in April, the dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies will also pay a visit. This cooperation process is already happening and I am grateful.
We already take part in cooperation programs in Europe, like the Erasmus program, but we are trying to go a step further here. Macau is, historically, very relevant. We asked the Macau Ricci Institute and the University of Saint Joseph to give us inspiration, both in Slovenia and in Europe. In Ljubljana we have a lot of students coming from Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and from almost every country in the European Union. The world is becoming smaller and smaller and I am really grateful for the wonderful experience that I had in Macau.
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