São Paulo – The Pontifical Catholic University in Campinas (PUC-Campinas), São Paulo entered into an educational knowledge-sharing agreement last week with Lebanon’s Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (PUC), PUC-Campinas said.
PUC-Campinas president Germano Rigacci Júnior, PhD, was quoted on the university’s website that the agreement will enable professor and student exchange in teaching, research and extension work.
Rigacci met with his USEK counterpart, priest and professor Georges Hobeika, to sign the agreement, in the presence of archbishop Airton Santos, the chancellor of PUC-Campinas. Hobeika visited the PUC-Campinas campus with USEK’s Latin America Studies and Cultures Center (LASCC) director Roberto Khatlab and provost for Cultural Affairs Hoda Nehme.
“Through the LASCC, USEK has been building a bridge of contacts and academic exchange with Latin America,” Khatlab told ANBA, noting that USEK already sustained agreements with PUC in Goiás and São Paulo, and with the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
“The goal is for professors and students to engage in exchange and for both regions to become better acquainted and to share experiences. The human connection stemming from immigration is already there, and we wish to enhance it in science as well,” Khatlab said.
At PUC-Campinas, Hobeika, Khatlab and Nehme also joined a colloquium on “Religion, Justice and Peace.” The university said Nehme and Hobeika addressed the Middle East’s political and religious scenario. Hobeika discussed “Christians in the East, Between Planned Persecution and the Indifference of the Global System.”
“These Christians have the right to be respected and to be protected by the international community. Unfortunately, we are abandoned. We hope that everything will change for the better. We need that, because everybody in this Orient needs to breathe, to breathe democracy, to breathe freedom of conscience, to breathe liberty freedom in all fields, like in Europe, like in USA, everywhere in the world,” Hobeika told PUC-Campinas TV.
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
