In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Peace be with you.

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Brothers and sisters,

I am very pleased to extend my greetings to you, Rector, Dean, professors and lecturers, students and friends, who are taking part in the International Conference marking the 150th anniversary of the Faculty of Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

On 16 August 1876, at the behest of Blessed Pius IX, the Congregation for Studies mandated the institution of your Faculty. It was the fulfilment of a long tradition of study and teaching of canon law, which had accompanied the history of the Roman College and of the Society of Jesus. Indeed, the date on which we celebrate the 150th anniversary represents a fundamental milestone in a history that began centuries ago, thanks to which the teaching of canon law had already developed its own scholarly tradition, through the contribution of numerous distinguished scholars who have brought honour to the Faculty and made a significant contribution to the development of canon law. They form a sort of unbroken thread linking the generations and which, even today, passes on a valuable scholarly and ecclesial legacy.

This Faculty, like the University of which it forms a part, is an apostolic work of the Society of Jesus. It therefore shares in the spirituality that has its source in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and which, amongst its characteristic features, includes that which is summarized in the expression: Non multa, sed multum. What matters, that is to say, is not knowing many things, but penetrating deeply into reality, understanding it and internalizing it. Saint Ignatius writes: “For it is not knowing much, but realizing and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul” (cf. EE. SS., Annotations, 2, 4).

It is therefore not surprising that this spiritual approach is reflected in the way your Faculty conceives the teaching of canon law. The aim, in fact, is not only to know the norms governing ecclesial life, but also to form people who possess an ecclesial sense of the iustum, acquired through the careful study of the sources, the canonistic tradition and the theological principles that illuminate the norm. This is possible when the study of canon law takes place in the light of the mystery of the Church, as illustrated by the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium. While it is true, as Saint John Paul II wrote in the Apostolic Constitution Sacrae disciplinae leges (25 January 1983), by which he promulgated the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church, that “it is impossible to translate perfectly into canonical language the conciliar image of the Church”, canon law must nevertheless reflect it. It performs an essential service in safeguarding ecclesial communion and, therefore, is “extremely necessary for the Church” and aims “to create such an order in the ecclesial society that, while assigning the primacy to faith, grace and the charisms, it at the same time renders easier their organic development”. Indeed, the good of the individual and of the ecclesial community cannot exist independently of one another.

For this reason, in the Programme of Studies of your Faculty states: “Church law must always be directed towards the supernatural good of the individual faithful and the edification of ecclesial communion”. I urge you to work faithfully towards this end, that is, for the supernatural good of individuals, which is achieved by pursuing true justice, which in the Church is never separated from truth and mercy. Saint Augustine expresses this with a phrase dear to the Christian tradition: “Ordinata dilectio est iustitia”.

I would also like to emphasize a characteristic of your identity which is also found in the Statutes: the Faculty “recognizes its special role in serving the Petrine mission. Therefore, in its teaching, it is faithful to the Magisterium of the Church and accords priority to the service its professors render to the Apostolic See”. I therefore invite you to offer your students a living experience of the universal Church, which finds in the Bishop of Rome the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity (cf. Lumen Gentium, 23).

The students – seminarians, consecrated persons and laypeople – who come from so many parts of the world to pursue their studies in Rome must be able to experience, not least through university life, that the Church is a universal communion; and, once they return to their particular Churches, they must take this experience with them as a treasure to be shared, placing it at the service of their communities.

Dear friends, after 150 years, your Faculty can look to the future with confidence in God and also in the great legacy you have received. Thus, following in the footsteps of those who have gone before you, you will be able to continue to bear those fruits of doctrine, learning and holiness of life which the Lord and the Church expect of you.

May the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Speculum iustitiae, and my Apostolic Blessing accompany you on this journey.