Gregorian hands first academic post to Muslim

BY CINDY WOODEN IN ROME
FOR the first time in its 456year history the Pontifical Gregorian University has offered a permanent contract to a professor who is not Catholic.
Adnane Mokrani, 43, taught courses in Islam at the Jesuitrun university in Rome for five years before being offered a contract as an adjunct lecturer.
“For a Muslim theologian involved in dialogue, one who has studied Christianity, to be in this environment is to be in paradise,” said Mr Mokrani, a Tunisian who holds a doctorate in Islamic theology from Zitouna University in Tunis and a doctorate in ChristianMuslim relations from the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome.
“It’s a great gift of God; it’s providential,” said Mr Mokrani, who teaches in the university’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies on Religions and Culture.
Until the university created the positions of adjunct lecturer and adjunct professor at the beginning of the academic year, it offered permanent contracts only to people with a Catholic baptismal certificate. Muslims and Jews, including rabbis, who have been teaching at the university for decades, were rehired each year and paid according to the number of courses they taught.
Full-time, permanent professors at the university, heads of the university departments and members of the university’s governing board are required to make a profession of Catholic faith and take an oath of fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Jesuit Fr Felix Korner, director of the Gregorian’s institute for the study of religions, said the institute was designed to be a place “where non-Christians and Christians can study together to prepare themselves for theological dialogue”.
“We want to teach nonChristian religions, but with a presentation that has a maximum of authenticity; this means we must have professors from the other religions,” he said on December 11. “Formation for theological dialogue requires first-hand presentations of other religions and not just information.” Hiring Muslims and Jews to teach was a first step, he said. Then, the matter of offering them permanent contracts “became a question of justice”.
This year, he said, the institute’s student body includes eight Muslim students studying Christianity in addition to the Catholic students studying Islam and other religions.
Whether the student is Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Hindu, “we require those studying for a master’s degree to have done basic theological studies in his or her own tradition first. We do not want people falling into confusion, but to learn and grow interacting with others in a theologically challenging way,” Fr Korner said.