Good afternoon,
I’m very pleased and honoured to join this Plenary of our Pontifical Academy of Sciences and to briefly introduce myself.
I’m father Mauro Mantovani, member of the Congregation of Salesians of Don Bosco, Italian. Since February 2023 I am the Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library.
I studied in Turin (my hometown), in Rome and in Salamanca (Spain), achieving a Doctorate in Philosophy at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, and a Doctorate in Theology at the Pontifical University Saint Thomas Aquinas “Angelicum” in Rome.
I’m still teaching Theoretical Philosophy – even though now in a very reduced way – at the Pontifical Salesian University, Rome, where I was the Dean of the Faculties of Philosophy and Sciences of Social Communication, and the President, in the period 2015-2021. During those same years I also directed the Conference of Rectors of the Roman Pontifical Universities (CRUIPRO).
My principal fields of research and publication are various questions at the border between philosophy and theology, often also in dialogue with natural and human sciences, considering the works and tradition of thought connected with Thomas Aquinas, like the notions of creation, eternity and time, nature and grace, freedom, human person, integral ecology, and the meaning of history.
I have worked in particular on the commentaries to the Summa Theologiae by the Dominican and Jesuit Masters in Theology of the 16th and 17th centuries, the so-called “Second Scholasticism”.
Among other things, I am a member of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, of the Scientific Committee of AVEPRO – the Agency of the Holy See for promoting Quality and Evaluation in the Universities – and consultant of the Dicastery of Education and Culture.
In the last few years a particular object of reflection has been the Foreword (Proemium) of the Apostolic Constitution Veritatis gaudium by Pope Francis, with the invitation to deepen and to practice inter- and cross-disciplinarity in relation to and in dialogue among the sciences: this is a very fruitful epistemological perspective and concrete indication of work.
The idea of interdisciplinarity and dialogue is also represented on the entrance door of the Vatican Library, with the presence of theology, canon law, philosophy, mathematics, natural sciences, astronomy, literature, arts and education; it is a place where PAS Academicians will always be welcome.
Thank you.