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We would like you, as the Chancellor of the University of Navarra, to outline the principles which moved you to found it, and explain its significance today in relation to higher education in Spain.

The University of Navarra was founded in 1952 — after many years of prayer, I am happy to say — with the idea of being a university which would express the cultural and apostolic ideals of a group of professors who felt deeply about education. It aimed then, as it does today, to contribute side by side with the other universities to solve a serious educational problem in Spain and in many other countries, which needs people who are well-trained in order to build a more just society.

Those who began it were no strangers to the Spanish university scene. They were professors who has been educated and had taught at Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Santiago, Granada and many other universities. This close cooperation, which I venture to say was closer even than that between neighbouring State universities, still continues. There are frequent interchanges and visits by professors, and national congresses where work is carried out in harmony, etc. The same contact has been maintained with the best universities in other countries. The present conferring of honorary degrees on professors of the Sorbonne, of Harvard, Coimbra, Munich and Louvain is an expression of this close contact.

The University of Navarra has stimulated the contributions to higher education of many people who consider that university studies, open to all who deserve to study, regardless of their financial resources, are basic to progress. The Association of Friends of the University of Navarra, with its generous help, has distributed a considerable number of scholarships and grants. This number will continue to increase, as will the number of Afro-Asian and Latin-American students.

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