95 la propuesta cristiana ante los desafíos de un mundo en cambio the Archangel, in italian, the Santuario de San Miguel the Archangelo; a Roman Catholic shrine on Mount Gargano southeast Italy. It is the oldest shrine in Western Europe dedicated to the archangel Michael and that has been an important side of pilgrimage for Christians since the 5th century. On May the 8 the church celebrates the origins of the sanctuary in the liturgical year. Now what happened here? In this pilgrimage I mainly had many Muslim students. I’m sure that this is the case even in other Catholic universities, we don’t have students within our faith, especially my classes, theology and ecclesiastical history, and one might expect that most of the students would be catholic but no, this is not the case anymore. The students that take my courses come from business school, they come from nursing school, from medical school, etc., and they practice different religions: Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, among others and they come to take these classes. First of all, they have chosen a Catholic University for all the values that the Catholic University has to teach them, right? and second, they come to take these courses. As soon as we entered this shrine my muslim students went deep in prayer. I had never seen that happen. I was struck and then, after that, after they prayed, we started a theological discussion on angels. There in that beautiful sight, on one side were my students who were Catholics and Christians and then, on the other side were my muslim students. We started discussing the theology of the angels or angeology that we call in theology. My muslim students were explaining to the Christian students what angels mean in Islam. What is Mikhail in Islam. What are the surahs that mention the angels as messengers actually? It was one of those teaching moments that as a faculty member I really appreciate, that is, students coming from their own traditions, from their own religious backgrounds and discussing their faith. There was a faith element there, because the muslim students were practicing their faith and, on the other hand, I had my catholic students who practiced their faith, of course in this very deep dialogue and then I said, you know what that is? the purpose of a catholic university. That is the purpose of interreligious dialogue, that is the purpose of these deep dialogues that happen in this particular shrine. We can start a dialogue in our classrooms, with our students, among students, but also, and my colleague beautifully mentioned that, it all depends on the professors, and although in Ex corde Ecclesiae Pope John Paul II talks about that faculty who teaches in the catholic la tradición intelectual católica como medio para el diálogo...
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