MILAN (ITALPRESS) – A special lesson for an inauguration ceremony. To keep it was Maestro Riccardo Muti with the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra on the stage of an unpublished scenography of the Aula Magna of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart.
“A lectio magistralis, in words and music, which embodies the very idea of knowing handed down from generation to generation and made alive by the direct experience and dialogue between eras”, defined it the Rector Elena Beccalli, introducing the inauguration ceremony of the academic year 2025-2026, to which several authorities took part, including the President of the Senate of the Ignazio Republic of Milan, the Vice President of the Senate.
“Even this year we decided to put at the center of the inauguration and academic dies a unitary theme: the alliance between generations,” said the Rector in his speech, interrupted in several passages from applause. “A theme that will be declined from time to time according to the different disciplinary specificities by stressing the transmission of knowledge; on active, inclusive and healthy ageing; on socio-economic policies to contain the demands of young people and the elderly.”.
A theme on which the Minister of the University and Research Anna Maria Bernini focused on: “History teaches us that true innovation stems from hybridization between art and science. Our teachers have taught us that the first alliance is between disciplines, between universities and enterprises, then, again, between Italy, Europe and Africa, and finally, the alliance between generations, which must be courageous, inclusive, permeable. For the first time in this time, five generations live together: an unpublished that brings life and new possibilities.” For Minister Bernini, “the teacher is the one who can drag the student to a talent he doesn’t even know he has, educates love for knowledge and teaches what true freedom is. The combination of art, technology and high training is the profound meaning of the alliance between generations.”.
Among the excruciating and prolonged applauses of an enthusiastic room, Riccardo Muti wanted to remember the honorary degree attributed to him by the Catholic University in 1999 and gave way to a memorable performance focused on the overture of Don Giovanni di Mozart. Among wise musical highlights, the Master retraced the paradox of a “playful drama” that turns into modern tragedy of rebellion to order. “The task of a university – he also said Professor Beccalli – is not only to pass on techniques, but to convey knowledge through experience: This is the cultural value of education. There is no ranking able to measure exactly the effect of this new educational paradigm, as it is not possible to verify the transmission of the cultural value of the Italian work. In both cases, however, the impact they have on society is visible. In fact, as music is a form of civil participation, so universities are institutions called to educate conscious and active citizens.”.
The inaugural speech was also an opportunity to draw some budget lines. In the current year, the new members are 13.489, marking an increase in the number of students in the master’s degree courses. The strong presence of admitted from all continents, with a growth of 37% since 2021, witnessing the increasingly marked attractiveness of degrees in the global context. A community that counts 43 thousand students, which join almost 40 thousand participants in continuing training courses. On the research front, the University received prestigious awards, including the award of three ERCs (European Research Council) funded in the 2025 call. A university that for the next three years is engaged in the Strategic Plan, based on a series of characteristic principles: to enhance the profile of a Catholic university not profit; to foster full integration between the dimension of educational communities and that of research university; build a place of experience of knowledge and not only of transmission of knowledge. A Plan whose originality lies in a “ synodal method” which is inspired by the “serving that unites”.
According to the Rector, “education is not a unidirectional transfer, but a mutual process among the generations in which experience and innovation intertwine in a dynamic of exchange and co-construction of cultural meanings”. By closing his speech, Rector Beccalli recalled that “the choice to put music at the center of this inauguration is an invitation, if not a real urge, to reflect on the ability to know how to transmit identity values to future generations. Just keeping them alive, a university really becomes a symphony of knowledge, educating, inspiring and transforming the world.” This approach “exalts the dynamics of education power according to which each contributes to creating knowledge. It is not a question of confusing the roles, but of supporting the knowledge transmitted by the teachers the awareness that young people operate as real cultural anticipators”. Completing the metaphor that led the ceremony, he said that “paragonating the university to an orchestra means depicting it as an educating community, in which every person – student, teacher, researcher, technical-administrative staff – plays his instrument with dedication and passion. As in a symphony, not all are soloists, but each part is essential for the successful execution.”.
Of intergenerational collaboration he spoke in his greeting as President of the Toniolo Institute of Higher Studies Monsignor Mario Delpini, who also presided over the Eucharistic concelebration in the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio. Speaking of the decline of western humanism, the bishop of Milan saw numerous signs of resistance and hope in the philosophy of the Catholic University. “We need an adult and courageous sense of responsibility that knows how to read the time we live and that does not subtract from the commitments that follow it; we need a dynamic of relationships between people, among the members of the University, between the University and the Italian Church, between the University and the Country, Europe, Africa and the Catholic Universities of the world”.
– Photo press office Catholic University –
(ITALPRESS).
