President's Blog: From the Heart

(The University of Dayton awarded an honorary degree to Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson on March 27 for representing the Holy See at the highest levels and dedicating his life to “justice and caring for the most vulnerable among us.”

Below is an excerpt of his acceptance speech. The University of Dayton, he said, “forms students not just to succeed, but to serve. Not just to build systems, but to question them. Not just to speak, but to listen. This, dear friends, is what our Church calls integral human development. And this is the formation that our wounded world needs.”

Read the honorary degree citation and news story.)

As an adopted alumnus of this great Marianist center of universal learning and formation through the conferment of this honorary degree, I am naturally driven to discover areas of convergence between this University and my mission in the Vatican, and how I may now also be an emissary of this University in the Church and in the world.

Today, however, I speak not as a scholar or official, but as a servant of the Church — one who has walked alongside the voiceless and the vulnerable across continents, and who has witnessed, time and again, the moral choices that can either uphold or unravel our shared humanity.

And so, I speak to you of the common — and of the conscience that must guard it. …

Institutions like yours, animated by the Marianist charism, are not luxuries. They are necessities.

Education — if it is to serve humanity — must form the whole person. As the Church has always taught, we are not merely minds to be filled or laborers to be trained. We are souls to be awakened. We are called to become persons of virtue.

Virtue is not a relic of ancient times. It is the framework by which freedom becomes responsibility, and talent becomes service. It is the internal compass that helps us choose community over consumption, conscience over convenience.

And I thank God that the University of Dayton teaches this. That it dares to believe in the slow, patient work of cultivating civilization — not as a factory, but as a garden.

The Marianist pillars — faith, community, inclusivity, service, and justice are not merely institutional values. They are lights in a darkening world.

Your community forms students not just to succeed, but to serve. Not just to build systems, but to question them. Not just to speak, but to listen. This, dear friends, is what our Church calls integral human development. And this is the formation that our wounded world needs.

Because, as I have seen in the refugee camps of South Sudan... as I have heard at the Vatican, at the UN in New York, in Davos... and as Pope Francis so powerfully teaches in Laudato Si': we cannot heal the planet without healing the human heart.

We cannot fix what is broken unless we first rediscover that we belong to one another: daring to turn the pain and suffering of other into our own personal experience.

And so I offer this humble appeal: do not let the field erode. The common — be it the climate, the global economy, or the soul of our democracy — is not doomed. It is entrusted to us to care for.

It is entrusted to scientists and to students. To presidents and to pastors. To business leaders and to builders. And yes, to all of us who now carry forth the flame of the characteristic of Marianist education. …

Let us protect it — with wisdom and restraint. Let us renew it — with courage and hope. Let us share it — with justice and joy. For, the greatest honor we can give this institution, the greatest legacy we can offer the Church and this nation, the greatest gift we can leave to posterity is not wealth or fame or power. It is a well-tended common: A world governed by a merciful solidarity: A future led by neighbor. As always, faith in God entails our vision of the world and of our place within it.