Culture

UNIV'23: The search for true happiness, a challenge for young people

The UNIV, born under the inspiration and impulse of St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, allows participants to experience Holy Week and Easter together with the Pope in the heart of Christianity.

Maria José Atienza-April 3, 2023-Reading time: 2 minutes
UNIV

Photo: Young people in St. Peter's Square at UNIV 2022 ©Opus Dei Flickr

Rome rejuvenates in a special way during the days of Holy Week. Students from more than one hundred universities from all over the world gather in Rome for these days on the occasion of the UNIV 2023.

The UNIV meeting It also combines cultural and intellectual formation with attendance at the liturgical ceremonies of Holy Week, a meeting with the Holy Father and a dialogue with the prelate of Opus Dei, Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz.

The theme proposed for this year by the UNIV organizing committee was "Searching for Happiness". As Robert Marsland, spokesperson for UNIVForum 2023 explains: "In the last half century we have been able to probe the depths of space and sequence the human genome, but we still struggle to answer two simple questions: what is happiness and how can I increase it?" Being happy and knowing how to be happy "is the hidden premise of all advertising and the reason behind every trip to the doctor's office," Marsland points out.

International speakers

UNIV 2023 foresees cultural events in various locations in Rome: conferences, colloquia, exhibitions, round tables with speakers such as Arthur Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and faculty member at Harvard Business School (USA);Yvonne Font, Rheumatologist (Puerto Rico);Francisco Iniesta, Professor at IESE Business School (Spain); Teresa Bosch and Florencia Aguilar, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Austral World Building Lab (Argentina) or Pietro Cum, CEO and General Manager of ELIS (Italy).

This year, the UNIV is holding its academic university meeting on Holy Tuesday at the headquarters of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

UNIV

The UNIV

In these 55 years, the UNIV meetings have been attended by more than 100,000 university students. Each year the students participate in the audience with the Pope.

On this occasion, the audience on April 5 will be particularly significant, considering Pope Francis' pressing call for peace, and the dramatic situation of so many of his contemporaries in Ukraine and in several areas destroyed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

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