Integration means finding common ground, pope tells university reps

Published: 2004-02-17

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Integration means finding common ground, not eliminating differences, Pope John Paul II told representatives of the Polish University of Opole. After receiving an honorary doctorate from the delegates Feb. 17, the pope praised the university for cooperating with the church in promoting social harmony and integrating ethnic minorities in the region of Opole. The Polish delegation was in Rome to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its founding. Opole University in southern Poland became the first state institution to open its own theology faculty after a Vatican agreement in 1994. Previous faculties in Warsaw and Krakow were dissolved by the ruling communists after World War II. "The university, by creating the possibility for the development of humanistic sciences, can help in the purification of memory that does not forget misdeeds and wrongs, but permits forgiving and asking forgiveness, and then to open the mind and heart to truth," the pope said.

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