“You are to us for forever, as you were at the time when you were bishop and Grand Chancellor of our university: a pastor who has walked, worked, suffered, and smiled with us, a pastor for all moments, the good ones as well as the very difficult ones,” Patricia Campo told Pope Léon XIV on Friday, November 13, at the Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, Peru.
The address marked the third day of the Pope’s apostolic journey to Peru, returning to an institution where the religious Augustinian Robert Francis Prevost served as bishop of Chiclayo and grand chancellor for roughly twenty years, Vatican News reported. The academic community welcomed the pontiff under the motto “Let us open our hearts,” gathering university authorities, civil leaders, researchers, and six thousand students on the institution’s parvis.
Citing the apostolic constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae, Léon XIV described the Catholic university as a living community where searching for truth serves as an act of love for humanity. Edinson Edgardo Farfán Córdova, the bishop of Chiclayo and grand chancellor, referenced the encyclical Magnifica humanitas during the gathering to emphasize the intersection of faith, reason, and integral human formation, according to Vatican News.
“A progress indifferent to the justice and dignity of workers becomes, in effect, a mechanism of oppression and exclusion,” Léon XIV said, warning that science without conscience ruins human life.
The Pope urged students and scholars to cultivate a critical spirit and pursue a wisdom that software cannot possess, ensuring technological progress supports integral human development and the common good.
Addressing contemporary philosophical questions regarding human limits, Léon XIV warned against the promises of transhumanism and posthumanism. He described these ideologies as beliefs that technology will eventually eliminate disease, pain, aging, and death itself.
“We are thus sold the illusion of human beings optimized by cybernetics and biotechnology,” the Pope said, noting that scientific progress risks becoming a privilege for wealthy individuals seeking immortality while entire populations endure poverty.
To manage the current era of complex changes, the pontiff invited academics to draw from the enduring legacy of the saint patron of this academic institution.
The gathering included personal accounts from the university community, blending cultural reflection with religious commitment. Adriano Alonso Rafael Durand, a 22-year-old law student, shared his spiritual conversion and his deliberate efforts to distance himself from actions leading away from God, Vatican News reported.
María Guzmán, a university professor and mother of a child diagnosed with autism and cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic, spoke about enduring extreme personal isolation and hardship.
Concluding the encounter, Léon XIV exhorted professors and students to act as free thinkers whose dedication to truth precedes public opinion. He encouraged them to transform scientific competencies into acts of social justice aimed at assisting the impoverished and protecting a natural environment impacted by damaging economic speculation.
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