The Tomás Moro Institute and the Juan Pablo II University of Costa Rica will launch a training program for Catholic leaders that seeks to deal with the “growing citizen apathy, the ethical separation of politics and the weakening of confidence in democratic institutions.”
This program, whose start of classes is scheduled for May 22, seeks to “forge leaders committed to public service, the common good and revitalization of democratic life.”
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Interviewed by ACI Press, Luis Fernando Calvo, executive director of the Tomás Moro Institute, explained that there are two main motivations that inspired to develop this program.
“On the one hand, we verify the absence of Catholic leaders in the public and political life of Costa Rica,” he said, “because the political flag of the Christian principles has been raised by members of Protestant congregations and the Catholics, which we have in our favor the social doctrine of the Church, we have stayed in the background, in the comfort of our parishes, without playing us decide public ”.
“On the other hand, we think it is essential to develop broader and integral formative proposals, that allow students to have a more complete training. This is for us a qualitative leap in the training offer of the Tomás Moro Institute,” he said.
On the motto of the program – “The multitude of believers had only one heart and one soul”, taken from Chapter 4 of Acts of the Apostles – Calvo explained that “we are talking about unity and communion, which in the case of this biblical quote refers to the communion of goods that the first Christians lived.”
“For us, it means that Catholics, when we work from our faith and, particularly, from the social doctrine of the Church, we can certainly be salt from the earth and light of the world, to be agents of change in favor of the common good.”
“This common good is not reached only from the particular experience of faith but also from the experience of our faith and its consequences in the social, political, economic and cultural fields,” he said, highlighting that “it is about acting according to our faith and unity.”
The executive director of the Tomás Moro Institute stressed that “we want the students, at the end of the program, to be more motivated, that they do not feel alone, like a Quijote fighting with wind mills, but that they feel part of a broader community.”
In addition, he said, “we want to give pragmatic tools to our students, to better understand social and political phenomena and can better respond to the challenges of the times we live.”
While this first edition is directed exclusively to residents of Costa Rica, Calvo said that “our intention is power, for the next version of the program, take it to other countries and be able to admit to students from other nations.”
“In short, we want the Tomás Moro Institute to serve the Central American region, which is certainly linked by a common history and, we think, also share a common destiny,” he said.
The formation will last seven months, and will be carried out with hybrid modality, in a virtual 90%.
For more information and inscriptions you can write to info@tomasmoro.org or Fill this form online.
David Ramos
Graduate in Communication Sciences by the Private University of the North in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working in ACI Press, I am based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered the trips of Pope Francis to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.