Hannah Smith ’24 is a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame majoring in the Program for Liberal Studies and theology. She traveled to Zagreb, Croatia, in May 2024 to be part of the Nanovic Institute’s delegation at the 20th anniversary meeting of the Catholic Universities Partnership. She joined William Smith ’24 and students from each CUP institution for a student panel and participated in the proceedings.
Walking into the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary in downtown Zagreb is somewhat like how I imagined climbing inside a dinosaur skeleton at the museum as a child would feel: warm, dark, and permeated by the woody perfume of decay. Where pews once stood, a maze of scaffolding now supports the crumbling limbs of one of Zagreb’s most important cultural landmarks. Outside, stone blocks that formerly comprised the cathedral’s bell towers are labeled and arranged in a grid, waiting to be stacked like vertebrae.
Visiting the corpse of a cathedral initially seemed like a rather depressing way to conclude the Catholic Universities Partnership (CUP) conference this May. Perhaps the conference organizers had intended it to serve as a memento mori.
During the conference proceedings, there was an extended discussion of the many challenges facing Catholic higher education institutions, not the least of which is low enrollment.
Secretly, I could not help but worry that this church, which some would regard with no more reverence than a dinosaur skeleton, also reflected how many prospective students might view the Catholic Church at large and Catholic universities in particular: an artifact or object of curiosity at best, a heap of bones, impossible to reanimate at worst.
Yet, the light from the rose window illuminating the faces of my newfound friends—student representatives from Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Georgia, and Croatia—told a different story.
like the scaffolding that upholds the exquisite Zagreb Cathedral, these dynamic young people, their bonds of friendship, and their commitment to their faith will enable the regeneration of beauty, truth, and goodness in the Church and the institutions they will come to lead.
These poets, journalists, social service workers, teachers, scholars, and future doctors are the Theresas that George Eliot writes of and on whom the growing good of both the Catholic Church and the world depends. Their willingness not only to live “faithfully a hidden life” when sacrifice is asked of them but also to humbly share the fruits of their labor and hard-won wisdom with a broader international community makes them ideal ambassadors for Catholic education. Khrystyna Dmytryshyn’s documentation of the war in Ukraine through articles, podcasts, and poetry and Lenka Horvathova’s work to improve the scope and quality of Slovakia’s social services for youth are just two examples among many of how these young people have begun to trace their lives after the pattern of Christ’s servant leadership. In their eyes, the Zagreb Cathedral appeared not dead but dormant, and the tradition represented by the physical structure is very much alive in their hearts.
The theme of this year’s CUP conference was “From Friendship to Institutional Partnership.” The future of the CUP and its constitutive universities is bright because, like the scaffolding that upholds the exquisite Zagreb Cathedral, these dynamic young people, their bonds of friendship, and their commitment to their faith will enable the regeneration of beauty, truth, and goodness in the Church and the institutions they will come to lead. It was an honor to spend a weekend among them.
Read more about the vibrant 20-year history (and future) of the Catholic Universities Partnership in the recently released Nanovic Institute 2023-24 Year in Review, which includes a feature story on the CUP.
Read or Download the Year in Review Now
Originally published by at nanovic.nd.edu on October 07, 2024.