The CEI finances a project of the Diocese of Reggio Emilia to create a university in Madagascar

Objective to create a Catholic University in Farafangana, on the South-East coast, in one of the poorest and most peripheral regions

ROME – The CEI, the Italian Episcopal Conferencealongside the Diocese of Reggio Emilia and its missionaries in Madagascar to create in the poorest area of ​​that country a University and give training opportunities to young people and development opportunities for those lands. Confirmation of the commitment of the highest representative body of the Italian bishops has arrived in Modena in these hours and will contribute to achieving the challenging but intensely pursued objective by the Modenese priest Don Luca Fornaciari, who has managed to raise awareness among many people in the area, from the world entrepreneurial up to the top of the University, to create educational bridges between Modena and Madagascar. The CEI will financially support the redevelopment of an old seminary in the South-East of the country and the first part of the resources will arrive in these days, by the end of April. This support intervention gives a strong boost to the project, so much so that the University’s promoting committee will shortly go to the Italian embassy in Pretoria, which is also a point of reference for Madagascar, to make the commitment official.

DON LUCA FORNACIARI: “OPENING OBJECTIVE 2025”

Don Luca Fornaciari in a letter he recounted the genesis of the idea of ​​giving birth a Catholic University in Farafanganaon the South-East coast, in one of the poorest and most peripheral regions. Young people leave here and there is no university on this coast. “There are many emergencies here – he wrote – but we realized that, probably, the field in which we need to invest the most is the cultural one”. Furthermore, a university center can “contribute enormously to the development of the region”, as has already happened in other areas. The faculties have been identified – Agriculture, Pedagogy, Economics – and the diocese of Farafangana has made an imposing building available which will now be renovated. The project has already been done to make it compatible with the needs of a university, the high schools in the area have already been made aware and work is underway to recruit professors and collaborators. “If everything goes well – Don Fornaciari wrote confidently – we will be able to open our University in September 2025″. In the meantime, the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia has successfully analysed, the curriculum of the studies of the newly established Catholic University and this opens up the possibility of Malagasy students attending the master’s degree course in Italy.