Fordham University President Tania Tetlow Address to Pro-Pontifice Dinner

September 2022

Cardinal Parolin, we are honored that you have joined us. And I am personally so happy to see you again after our visit in Rome this summer.

This is a wonderful community we bring together tonight. CAPP – US, our beloved Jesuits, members of the Fordham faculty and trustees, alumni and friends. I want to explain why it is so fitting that we come together.

His Eminence came to the United Nations this week to speak on behalf of the Vatican. As my new friend Archbishop Caccia has explained to me, the Church speaks with a different and uniquely powerful moral voice in the midst of the gathering of nation states and global NGOs.

Cardinal Parolin chose to use that voice to focus on the power of education. To give the world insights into the power of the Catholic model of education.

It is therefore fitting that he would join the Fordham community, under the leadership of CAPP, to celebrate what we have achieved and to talk about the work ahead.

Your Eminence, will not be surprised to know that the people in this room agree with you that education – and particularly the Catholic form of education – can be the answer to many of the world’s pressing problems. As we say in America, here you will be preaching to the choir.

The world has made our work ever more crucial.

The Catholic intellectual tradition continues to search for truth – even as the very concept of truth is under attack around the world. We believe in the kind of research that solves the toughest problems, from climate change to helping the poor.

We teach our students how to think for themselves. How to see through the tides of disinformation, how to avoid the temptations of conspiracy theories. We push back on the rising tide of selfishness across the world. We teach the fundamental precepts of our faith – in the fundamental dignity and equality of all people. In the importance of making sacrifices for a common good.

At Fordham, we read the Pope’s words in Fratelli Tutti and Laudato Si and we act. We model for our students what it means to live our faith. We’ve built the largest solar field in the city of New York to reduce our carbon footprint by a third. Our business school faculty convene gatherings of the CEOs of entire industries, to sit down and decide what corporate responsibility actually means. We teach our students how to go out there and make a difference by showing them.

And in everything we do, we work hard to pull our students back to the faith.

In an increasingly secular world, it has gotten harder to persuade our students. And to be fair, it has always been a daunting task to persuade teenagers of anything. When they go to university, we give young people the gift of free will a little bit terrified about how they will use it.

When in doubt about how best to draw our students in, we turn to the Gospels and take them quite literally. We work hard to persuade our students to feel the love and acceptance of God. We welcome home the prodigal son, with fatted calf and open arms. We help rebuild trust with a Church eager to hear the voices of the young.

It is our great responsibility and privilege to do this work at Fordham.

And here, even here, we face our own temptations away from mission – the distractions of competing in the American higher education market, full of its own markers of status. But we never lose sight of what it means to be one of the premiere Catholic universities in the world.

It’s true that we are relatively new compared to some, only 181 years old. But are proud to be part of a global church. To have the privilege and the responsibility of operating on a world stage.

And as such, your Eminence, we are very happy to accept the invitation you gave us in Rome to partner with Villa Nazereth, the remarkable school in Rome that provides free education to those who need it most. To strengthen our ties every day with institutions across the globe.

At Fordham, we know that we succeed because of — not in spite of — our Catholic identity.

At a moment when young people hunger for meaning, Fordham gives them a purpose for their lives. At a moment when young people demand that we fix a broken world, Fordham proves that we care about the planet they inherit.

We ask that you pray for us in our work, that we will have the wisdom to find the right decisions and the courage to make those right choices.

Thank you for being with us tonight.