“Knowledge of other cultures, acquired with an appropriate critical sense and within a solid ethical framework, leads to a deeper awareness of the values and limitations within one's own culture, and at the same time it reveals the existence of a patrimony that is common to the whole of humanity. Thanks precisely to this broadening of horizons, education has a particular role to play in building a more united and peaceful world. It can help to affirm that integral humanism, open to life's ethical and religious dimension, which appreciates the importance of understanding and showing esteem for other cultures and the spiritual values present in them.”

 (Pope John Paul II, World Day for Peace message, 1 January 2001)

 The windows of the Polish home have been open for more than twenty years now. More and more people go abroad, leaving not only our country, but also the circle of the European civilization and bring home experiences previously unknown to us. What is even more important, growing numbers of people from beyond our civilization circle come to Poland and settle here. Poland, rapidly torn away from the communist isolation, got into the centre of the globalization process. The events in New York City, Madrid and many others, have shown the menacing face of this process as well as the necessity and importance of understanding between different cultures.

     When educated, are you prepared to confront the variety of cultures and civilizations?

      Are you able to understand and accept this variety and will you be able to help others understand it?

     Will we be able, guided by the Christian precept of fraternal love – so important, as it seems, to so many Europeans – to embrace people whose physical features and customs differ from ours?

    Will the smell of food, so much different from the one we are accustomed to, prepared by our Asian neighbour, make us demand their eviction and suspect them of terrorism?

    Will we be able to accept a mosque, a Hindu or a Buddhist temple in Częstochowa, the same was that the people of Asia and Africa have accepted Christian churches?

 Before our very eyes new minorities grow in their numbers. If we do not want to make fraternal love an empty declaration which has no effect whatsoever on our behaviour towards people different from us, we must learn to live next to them.

We encourage young people, curious of the world, to constantly create with us the programme of these studies. It has been changing and it must be changing, confronted with the reality of the global world and with the expectations of the students and ourselves.

prof. dr hab. Maria Krzysztof Byrski

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