Year of the City

THE YEAR OF THE CITY

A reflection of our Mission as a Jesuit Catholic University

The Year of the City is an initiative that has deep roots in Loyola’s mission as a Jesuit Catholic University. Inspired by the example of St. Ignatius Loyola and informed by the broader Catholic intellectual and social traditions, Loyola seeks to educate persons of compassion and competence who can address the pressing needs of our communities and our world. This commitment, far from being an isolated learning aim, lies at the very heart of a Loyola education.

The “essential vocation” of a Jesuit university, writes Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., “is tirelessly to seek the truth and to form each student into a whole person of solidarity who will take responsibility for the real world.”

[1] This requires, among other things, that students allow “the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering, and engage it constructively.”

[2] For this formation to be sufficiently comprehensive and effective, it must be encompassed within a commitment of the university as a whole to take into its own life the sufferings and authentic strivings of the wider human community.

This commitment to solidarity—as an educational goal and institutional priority—is expressive of an incarnate spirituality that honors the dignity of all persons and is informed by God’s special love for those who are poor and oppressed. Animated by a spirituality of this kind, St. Ignatius deliberately chose the city over the monastery as the setting for the apostolic work of the Society of Jesus. Following Ignatius, we too “choose” the city as the primary setting for our own apostolic work by way of the Year of the City. In rededicating ourselves to the context we have inherited from history, we renew and deepen our commitment to Loyola’s fundamental educational aims.

The Pastoral Counseling Response

The Year of the City Homepage