Profile & Mission

The Pontifical University of the Holy Cross was born from the desire of St. Josemaría Escrivá, Founder of Opus Dei, to create a center of higher ecclesiastical studies in Rome at the service of the whole Church. With prayer and patient work, he laid the foundations of the current University of the Holy Cross.

St. Josemaria’s first successor, Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, with the support of St. John Paul II, brought that desire to completion, inaugurating the Roman Academic Center with a Holy Mass dedicated to the Holy Spirit on October 15th, 1984. Thanks to the assistance of the University of Navarre's ecclesiastical Schools, the institution was destined to become a center of study and research, committed to the task of theological, philosophical, and canonical formation.

The Pontifical University of the Holy Cross is currently comprised of the Schools of Theology, Canon Law, Philosophy, and Church Communications; the Higher Institute of Religious Studies “all’Apollinare” (ISSRA) is also an essential element. The Academic Building is found in Palazzo S. Apollinare in Rome, while the Research Center and the Library are located on Via dei Farnesi.

The specific mission of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross is to enrich one’s understanding of the faith while increasing one’s capacity to dialogue with contemporary culture.

The spirit, vision and commitment that gave rise to universities in Europe centuries ago is the same that inspires the intellectual rigor of research at the service of a faith at Santa Croce. The University seeks an understanding of the faith that impacts a person’s life, better able to give an account of the hope that is in him.

The Santa Croce tries to confront the challenges of today's world by viewing areas of concern as opportunities, forming men and women—priests, religious, lay persons—whose profound and intellectually sound faith is able to enter into dialogue with modernity, advocating Christ convincingly and with conviction.

Within the vast spiritual legacy left by St. Josemaría Escrivá, exists without a doubt the exhortation to cultivate a profound unity of life. This call is manifested not only in a proper balance and consistency between words and actions, but also through the harmony that should exist between professional and intellectual formation on the one hand, and spiritual and theological formation on the other.

Academic activities, organized with an interdisciplinary spirit, are open to scholars and intellectuals from the economic, scientific, philosophical, and political fields, this providing the elements necessary for a true dialog with the world.