Pope Benedict XVI has urged universities to encourage meeting of cultures.

Addressing participants of the third World Congress for the Pastoral Care of International Students at the Vatican, he said: “Today more than ever the openness of cultures to one another is the most fertile terrain for dialogue among people committed to seeking authentic humanism. The meeting of cultures in universities must, then, be encouraged and supported. ... Thanks to their intellectual, cultural and spiritual formation, international students have, in fact, the potential to become architects and protagonists of a more human world”.

The Pope noted that international students are an increasingly large group within the broader phenomenon of migration. This, he said, can be due to a lack of high-quality education and suitable structures in their countries of origin, the presence of social and political tensions, or the availability of economic support to study abroad.

“It is important,” he said, “to offer them a healthy and well-balanced intellectual, cultural and spiritual formation, so that they do not get absorbed into the ‘brain drain’ but become a socially and culturally relevant group in view of their return as future leaders to their countries of origin” where they can “help to build cultural, social and spiritual ‘bridges’ with their host nations.”

The Pope added that universities are a vital field for evangelisation.