Vatican City, Jul 13, 2009 / 23:10 pm
On Saturday Pope Benedict XVI addressed over 1,100 university students about missionary efforts at universities. Encouraging them to bear witness to Jesus Christ, he urged them both to help bring discussion of God back into the classroom and to overcome materialist worldviews.
The students were participants in the first European meeting of university students promoted by the Catechesis-School-University Commission of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE). The meeting’s theme was “New disciples of Emmaus: In University as Christians.”
Pope Benedict mentioned the theme of “development” several times, echoing a major topic of his recent encyclical “Caritas in veritate.”
Noting the students’ visit to the Vatican took place on the Feast of St. Benedict, the Pope said that the meeting showed to the episcopal conferences of Europe the students’ “willingness to continue along the path of cultural development, which St. Benedict knew to be vital for the human and Christian maturity of the people of Europe.”