My Dad's famous and stuffs--or at least, getting known...

A Catholic University president who wants to understand Catholicism within a larger quest for truth and human communion. It's refreshing. Check it out:

By HOLLY WAGNER
Quincy Herald-Whig Staff Writer
The pope told Catholic educators that both faith and reason are integral to a Catholic education, Quincy University President-elect Robert Gervasi said Thursday.

His message was consistent with the tone he set at the outset of his papacy, Gervasi said. That is, that "God is love."

Gervasi was invited to attend Pope Benedict XVI's address at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in which he spoke to more than 400 heads of U.S. Catholic universities, colleges and schools.

"It was a very, very inspiring address," Gervasi said. "It really was wonderful not only to see and hear the Holy Father but to be in the company with Catholic (educators) from throughout the country."

Gervasi understood the pope's message to be one that was both "very encouraging but certainly challenging as well," he said.
Conservatives were expecting Benedict to accuse educators of abandoning the faith to conform to an increasingly secular world. The nation's Catholic colleges and universities have been at the center of a tug-of-war within the church for decades over religious identity and free expression.

The pope told them that academic freedom has "great value" for the schools, but it does not justify promoting positions that violate the Catholic faith.

"(The pope's) fundamental message is that Catholic education is the culture through which we want to encourage students to have that personal encounter that really changes their lives," Gervasi said. "(We can) provide the culture in which that can happen in a shared search for truth, employing both faith and reason."

Gervasi quoted the pope as saying the Catholic identity can't be measured in statistics or course content, but by faculty and staff who model the experience of love and joy in their own lives and invite students into it.

"I think that speaks well to institutions like Quincy University where half of our students are not Catholic but all I think are welcomed into that culture of caring that makes genuine learning possible," Gervasi said.

Gervasi, an education consultant and former president and CEO of the Institute for Study Abroad in Indianapolis, was selected in December as the first lay president of Quincy's 147-year-old Franciscan university.

He was in Quincy last weekend participating in the Bridge the Gap race, and he plans to return for graduation the weekend of May 18-19. Gervasi will move to Quincy in June and spend the summer getting to know the school and community.

"I know Quincy University has been through some trying times, but I'm determined to look forward and encourage everyone to celebrate the good that QU has done in 150 years," he said.

-- hwagner@whig.com/221-3374
Created: 4/18/2008 | Updated: 4/18/2008