Already in the past, the University Management had maintained a regular exchange with the then Congregation for Education. For the KU, the Curia’s Authority is, so to speak, the Ministry of Science on the church side. Since the reform of the Curia, the area of culture has also been part of its responsibility. Portuguese Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonca has presided over the Dicastery as Prefect for the past year. Gien and Stüwe met him last week for an exchange lasting about an hour. They also had a detailed conversation with the new Undersecretary of the Dicastery, Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi. The Italian was until recently an economics professor at the prestigious Sacro Cuore University in Milan before being appointed by Pope Francis to the new post in the Roman Curia.
During the talks, the University Management outlined the KU's profile and the successes of recent years. In addition, Gien and Stüwe explained the plans for the further development of the University in the areas of research, teaching and transfer, but also in profile fields such as sustainability and family friendliness or in the area of governance and location development. Furthermore, the international cooperation of Catholic universities was a topic of the discussions. The KU is not only part of the worldwide network of Catholic universities, but in recent years has also established several strategic alliances with renowned Catholic partner universities on all continents. The most recent example is the Consortium of Catholic Universities (CCU), which the KU launched in 2022 together with the University of Notre Dame (USA), Bethlehem University (Palestine), Fu Jen University (Taiwan), the University of Notre Dame (Australia), Saint Mary's University (UK), and several papal universities in South America.
Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonca and Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi showed great interest in the KU's initiatives at the international level and promised a timely visit to the KU in Eichstätt to intensify discussions about these networks, among other things. Both also emphasized the important role of Catholic universities in the context of societal transformation and new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Here, the task of Catholic universities will be to focus on questions of ethics and responsibility as well as social implications. In this context, Gien and Stüwe referred to the new professorships on the cross-cutting topic "For a human-centered digital society" and the recently established Mathematical Institute for Machine Learning and Data Science (MIDS), which focuses on precisely this area.