In an Aula Magna transformed into a stage for a day the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart inaugurated the new academic year 2025/2026 last Friday in Milan with a very particular lectio. Guiding it, with the authority of the great master, was Riccardo Muti, accompanied by the Youth Orchestra “Luigi Cherubini” which he himself founded.
«A lesson in words and music that embodies the very idea of knowledge handed down from generation to generation», underlined the Rector Elena Beccalli opening the ceremony, in the presence of the highest institutional officials.
A community that grows and renews itself
La Cattolica presents itself at the start of the academic year with a large and lively community: 43 thousand students, almost 40 thousand participants in continuous training activities, a constant increase in enrollments and a significant growth in international students. Numbers that testify to the attractiveness of a University capable of combining identity and innovation, loyalty to values and global openness.
On the research front, the results speak clearly: three new ERC projects in the 2025 call confirm the quality of scientific production and the international reputation of the University.
«The university’s task is to provide experience with knowledge»
In her speech, Rector Beccalli brought a crucial theme back to the center, not only for the Catholic world: education as a meeting, as an exchange, as a shared construction of knowledge. “It’s not just about transmitting techniques, but about making people experience knowledge,” he said, “just as music is a form of civil participation, the university also educates aware and active citizens.” Words that found an echo in the speech of the University Minister, Anna Maria Bernini, who recalled how the most authentic innovation arises from the encounter between disciplines, between generations, between cultures. “For the first time, five generations are living together: something new that brings with it new possibilities,” he said. And he indicated the teacher, the one who knows how to discover talents and free vocations, as the model of a generative and courageous alliance.
Music as a thread that unites
Then the word moved on to music. Muti, greeted with long and affectionate applause, recalled the honorary degree he received from the Cattolica in 1999. With the lightness of the great masters he guided the audience into the “playful drama” of Don Giovanni of Mozart, revealing his paradox, his shadow, his modernity. His was not just a music lesson, but an invitation to be questioned by harmony and its opposite. To discover, together with the young musicians of Cherubini, that every era finds a universal language in beauty.
The theme of the alliance between generations returned several times, as a recurring motif. Beccalli summarized it with a very concrete and effective image: «Comparing the university to an orchestra means portraying it as an educating community, where everyone plays their instrument with dedication and passion. Not everyone is a soloist, but every part is essential.”
An image that tells well the path of the next three years, outlined in the University’s strategic plan: enhance the non-profit profile, integrate the educational community and research, build not only places of transmission but of living experience of knowledge.
According to the Rector, «education does not represent a unidirectional transfer, but rather a reciprocal process between generations in which experience and innovation are intertwined in a dynamic of exchange and co-construction of cultural meanings». And he recalled that «the choice to put music at the center of this inauguration is an invitation, if not a real solicitation, to reflect on the ability to pass on identity values to future generations. Only by keeping them alive does a university truly become a symphony of knowledge, educating, inspiring and transforming the world.” This approach “exalts the dynamics of education power on the basis of which everyone contributes to creating knowledge. It’s not a question of confusing the roles, but of combining the knowledge transmitted by the masters with the awareness that young people operate as true cultural forerunners.”
Delpini: an adult sense of responsibility
In his greeting as President of the Toniolo Institute, the Archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, who shortly before had celebrated Mass in the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, recalled the need for a “adult and courageous sense of responsibility”, capable of facing the challenges of our time without shying away from commitments. He recognized the Catholic educational philosophy as a sign of hope in the context of the decline of Western humanism. «We need lively relationships between people, between university and Church, between university and country, between Europe, Africa and the world», he stated, indicating the path to continuous and fruitful dialogue.
The ceremony concluded with an invitation: «Knowing how to transmit identity values to future generations», said Beccalli, «because only by keeping them alive does a university become a symphony of knowledge that educates, inspires and transforms the world».
A message that conveys the deepest meaning of the inauguration: not just an academic rite, but an act of trust. A call to build, together, a future in which experience and innovation, tradition and creativity, young people and adults can play the same music.
