Pope Francis will participate this Thursday in a virtual meeting with students from Catholic universities in the Americas in which issues such as the environment and migration will be addressed.
The meeting entitled “Building North-South bridges” will be the first of its kind in which the Argentine pontiff will participate and is organized by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and the Loyola University of Chicago together with a network of universities from the Society of Jesus.
On this occasion, Francisco will talk with university students and “highlight migrants and children of migrants who are committed to developing processes that justly transform the environmental and economic realities related to human migration and displacement,” the organizers explain.
The students and the pope will discuss “concrete projects that seek to recognize and empower the existential peripheries to seek and lead the way towards social justice and the common good,” they point out.
There will be seven working groups that will represent the United States/Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, Brazil, and Latin America and will be made up of around 20 boys and girls who study in various specialties in the areas of Humanities and Sciences, and each one one of them will select a representative for the dialogue with Francis.
The pope will share a reflection, which will be followed by an exchange with the students.
In statements to the Vatican media, the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the Argentine theologian Emilce Cuda, stated that with this space they intend to confront and find solutions “to the problem that our continent is going through, the tragedy of the Americas, the problem of the migration”.
“The pope loves young people, he says they are the presence of society and he is excited to dialogue with them,” Cuda recalled.
This unprecedented meeting is a “pilot test” of a cycle that they want to continue for the next three years, involving Catholic and secular universities.
According to Cuda, when he presented the initiative to the pope, he thought it was a “fantastic” proposal.