Dean’s letter

A cordial greeting to all those who, with the beginning of the academic year, are joining the School of Theology of the University of Navarra as professors, students or service personnel.

The Faculty is enriched by your presence and welcomes you with joy and hope. We all hope that your stay with us will be enriching and that you will achieve the objectives you have set for yourselves; we also hope that this stay will be pleasant, rich in dialogue and friendship, that is to say, authentically university-like.

The Faculty already has a long experience in research and teaching. It began its activity as a Theological Center in 1964. It was elevated to the rank of Theological Institute in 1967, and was erected by the Holy See as a Faculty in 1969. Its academic titles have full canonical validity and civil recognition. Hundreds of students have already passed through its classrooms, and they exercise the teaching of theology and the priestly ministry in the most diverse places of the world.

The teaching and research of the Faculty, structured according to a departmental model, are organized under the Department of Systematic Theology and the Department of Biblical Studies and Church History. In addition, the Institute of Church History is a research center. The students of the Faculty thus have easy access to the broad panorama of theology considered from very diverse and complementary angles; they also find a suitable place for their research. The Faculty's teaching and research offerings cover the essential areas of theological knowledge. In this sense, the generous service provided by the Humanities Library to the entire University of Navarra and, in particular, to the School of Theology is to be welcomed: its bibliographic holdings include more than one million volumes and it is connected to the most universal interlibrary loan and exchange systems.

Also belonging to the Faculty is an Institute of Religious Sciences, erected in 1997 and renewed, in accordance with the new norms of the Congregation, in 2011. The studies of Religious Sciences offer students a systematic vision of the mystery of Christ and the history of salvation, together with specific knowledge of pedagogical, didactic and catechetical subjects suitable for the formation of religion teachers.

Finally, the Faculty has three periodical publications: Scripta Theologica, Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia and Cuadernos doctorales de la Facultad de Teologia, which include a large part of the research carried out in the Faculty and, at the same time, are open to other researchers as is usual in the university environment.

I conclude by recalling some words of Pope Francis that encourage us in our task at the service of the Church and society, and help to give our theological work a sense of responsibility: "The Church, committed to evangelization, appreciates and encourages the charism of theologians and their efforts in theological research, which promotes dialogue with the world of cultures and sciences. I call upon theologians to fulfill this service as part of the Church's salvific mission. For this purpose, however, they must have at heart the evangelizing purpose of the Church and also of theology, and not be content with a desk theology" (Evangelii Gaudium, 133).

Dr. Gregorio Guitián  
Dean of the School of Theology