A Catholic University Opens its Doors
It opens its doors right in the middle of the Arab spring. And this is not a mere coincidence. For the past few weeks at Madaba – a Jordanian city 35 kilometers from Amman – registrations are open in a new Catholic University of the Middle East, strongly desired by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem whose jurisdiction includes the Catholics of Jordan. It was Benedict XVI himself, during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in May 2009, who laid the cornerstone of this new university. In these two years, it has been called “American University of Madaba,” in the name of a partnership with the University of New Hampshire which has strongly committed itself to supporting the initiative. But it remains a university that is fully recognized by Jordan, whose High Council for Education in 2005 assigned to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem the license to open its own university. This project has now become a reality: this month the courses of the first academic year will begin in the already completed wing of a large campus that, once totally finished, will accommodate up to 8,000 students.
