Father Agostino Gemelli, Founder of the Catholic University of Milan: Faith, Science, and Education/Otac Agostino Gemelli, utemeljitelj Katoličkog sveučilišta u Milanu: vjera, znanost i brazovanje

The Franciscan friar Agostino Gemelli (1878–1959) was one of the leading figures on the Catholic, political and intellectual scene of his time. He was a physician, a renowned psychologist, and founder in 1921 of the Catholic University of Milan. Coming from an anticlerical family, in 1902 he graduated Medicine in Pavia, as a brilliant student of the Nobel Prize Winner Camillo Golgi. After his conversion, he directed his research and activity in physiology and neurology increasingly towards a psychological application, in this way attributing experimental value to it. He specialized in Germany. He highly esteemed St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy and opposed both the neoidealist theories and those of positivism, as well as relativism. Gemelli strongly advocated the need to restore an “organic culture”, exemplified by medieval civilization, which opposed a fragmented and materialistic knowledge. The culture promoted by Gemelli had its roots in the union between faith and scientific research, well connected in the Aquinas philosophy. In 1921 Gemelli succeeded in implementing his greatest project (inspired by the University of Louvain), the foundation of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, the first university founded by Catholics in Italy, of which Gemelli was appointed rector. If his opposition to communism was strong and clear, his relationship with Fascism was rather ambiguous and is still debated. But he managed to keep the Catholic University free and to educate a generation of young Catholics that after 2WW contributed to rebuilding the Italian democracy. Conservative towards women, he nonetheless trusted Armida Barelli, who supported women’s higher education.