Cardinal Pizzaballa launches new academic initiative to foster peace in Holy Land

Jerusalem’s Catholic cardinal is announcing a new academic initiative aimed at fostering peace and stability in the often-violence-torn Holy Land. Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, officially launched “Within Your Gates: The Forum for the Universal Vocation of Jerusalem” on Sept. 7, according to a press release.

The Forum was developed in partnership with the University of Notre Dame’s Jerusalem Center and will bring together academic and scholarships in a research initiative to “engage with Jerusalem's universal mission and its significance not only for those who reside within the Holy Land but for all humanity,” the Latin Patriarchate’s press release said.

“The mission of earthly Jerusalem is to become the image and mirror of heavenly Jerusalem, a prophecy and promise of that universal reconciliation and peace which God desires for the whole human family,” said Cardinal Pizzaballa. “It is to this mission that we must return.”

Academics, scholars, and religious leaders from a range of religious backgrounds and disciplines will collaborate to focus on key themes for residents of the Holy Land, such as “the theological significance of Jerusalem, the city's universal vocation, the language of conflict and reconciliation, or agency under conditions of constraint.”

The Forum is the result of years of work by Cardinal Pizzaballa and the University of Notre Dame, with support and insight from other leading Catholic academics.

Gabriel Mitchell, director of undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Jerusalem Center and a member of the advisory committee for the Forum, told Zeale News that the “primary goal” of the Forum is to “pursue interdisciplinary research and outreach across political, religious, and ethnic lines with a specific focus on the issues that pertain to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.”

“By being interdisciplinary, the Forum will engage with scholars and practitioners in fields that are well-trodden (e.g. theology, history, political science) as well as less-obvious fields like architecture, literature, and management,” he said. “Our hope is that this interdisciplinary research produces academic and non-academic work that originally addresses real-life issues, and in doing so creates a platform for engagement between these different communities.”

The work of the Forum is a “natural extension” of the university’s Catholic and academic mission in Jerusalem, Mitchell continued, adding that the launch of the program “is the start of a process, not the end, so identifying clear indicators for success might be premature. For now, Within Your Gates is committed to producing high-quality work as we grow our network and produce original research.”

The Forum’s website says that the initiative is “particular in that it is rooted in the realities of Jerusalem, yet universal in nature — both by caring for the common good of all and by inviting people of other faiths to contribute to, share in, and inform its mission.”

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem sponsors the program and touts the Forum as a means of realizing the vision of the Catholic Church for the Holy Land through cooperation and collaboration with the civic and religious leaders who actually have the power to effect change.

The first publications from the Forum focus on the influence language has over physical and political realities, including condoning or encouraging violence and conflict.