Ledesma Kolvenbach Paradigm

The university’s values are based on four key dimensions:

HUMANITAS

The humanist dimension. It aims to foster “all-round persons”, with  the pillar of our common dignity as the starting point.  As for the intellectual approach, which does not exclude others, rationality in all its complexity must be cultivated without focusing solely on religious faith.

• Personal development: Cultivate and demonstrate an integrated whole formed by one’s own capacity and that of others.
• Human dignity: Exercise recognition and respect for all men as valuable beings, who are not to be used as instruments and are capable of independent initiative, which gives them the right to satisfactorily develop their abilities and reach their potential.
• Ethical responsibility: Act in agreement with solid moral principles, discerning how they should be applied to reality so that the foreseeable results of our decisions are assumed, complying with the demands of justice that encompasses duty to others and oneself,.

IUSTITIA

The social dimension. It aims to form persons “for and with others”, citizens committed to building fair social, economic and political structures, based on the “preferential option for the poor” dynamics.

• Equality: Coherent defence of all men’s intrinsic right to dignity- and their duties.- while recognising their differences and particularities.
• Culture for justice: Act to address, confront and correct inequality and human oppression, which calls for redistribution of resources to effectively achieve that all men have equal worth.
• Social commitment: Use one’s own qualities and skills to make a positive contribution to society, particularly focusing on inequality, oppression and alienation through civic participation, professional and volunteer work.

UTILITAS

The practical dimension. The university aims to train people to achieve professional excellence through academic excellence, basing both on moral values and magis dynamics.

• Oriented to knowledge: Willingness to achieve the proper understanding of realities based on truth through learning and research.
• Innovation/Creativity: Generate ideas, elaborate and express new proposals or approaches to existing proposals for new contexts, taking their feasibility into account and converting them into practical socially valuable realities.
• Global view: A systemic, universal, holistic view of reality, which goes beyond biased interpretations, particularist and individualist approaches stemming from moral judgements.  The capacity to communicate this view to others is also a key aspect.

FIDES

The religious dimension. This invites students to search for the ultimate meaning of life.  Making them empathetic and sensitive to religious pluralism, specifically offering a fundamental integrated perspective of the Christian faith expressed as a personal encounter with the Jesus of the Gospel.

• Search for meaning: Receptiveness to the discovery of a deep sense of one’s own existence and reality as a whole.
• Interreligious dialogue: Focus one’s own convictions to achieve intercommunication with persons or groups of other religious beliefs based on respect and conditions of equality.
• The Christian faith: Receptiveness to experience God’s mystery revealed through Jesus Christ, which leads us to follow Him.