VU Chaplain: “Dialogue between Science and Faith Is Always Alive”

From September 2022, chaplain Gintaras Vitkus SJ continues academic pastoral care in the community of Vilnius University. The new chaplain talks about the experience gained in working and helping others, shares insights about faith and values, and the importance of spiritual health for the community.

This September, you started serving as chaplain of Vilnius University. Tell us about your work experience in previous communities, is working in a university or research environment a new experience for you?

Working with young people and the scientific community has been accompanying me throughout my whole life. After finishing school in Kaunas, I considered becoming a physicist or mathematician, but I decided to study medicine. After graduating from the Kaunas Medical Institute (KMI) in 1982, I spent a year as an intern at the Department of Tuberculosis of the KMI, later I became a junior research associate at the Research Laboratory of Pulmonology at the KMI, and together with a team of scientists, we studied the problems of bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive bronchitis. In the last years of my work as a doctor, before entering the seminary, I worked in Prienai. While studying at the seminary, I also worked as a seminary doctor, and in 1991 I was ordained as a priest. So, I have been a priest for 31 years, and a Jesuit – for 40 years.

When I graduated from the seminary, I secretly hoped to work in the field of pastoral care or bioethics, but at that time, the Jesuits were given back their school – the Kaunas Jesuit High School, and I was appointed chaplain of this high school. A year later, in 1992-1993, I studied a special school administration course (Master's degree) at the Fordham Jesuit University in New York, in order to gain practical experience during those studies I had to stay in various Jesuit schools in America. This experience and studies were very useful, because I saw how communities are mobilised in different ways, how Jesuit education, although always associated with quality and serious academic preparation, still emphasises helping others. Jesuit high school students must participate in social practices in order to understand what work actually means and experience the joy of helping people. After returning from my studies, I became the principal of Kaunas Jesuit Gymnasium and worked there for 16 years.

In 2009, I was appointed Jesuit Provincial of Lithuania-Latvia. After completing the 7-year term of leadership of the Jesuits, during a sabbatical year in Rome I studied the problems of sexual abuse prevention, I also spent half a year in Chicago at Loyola University in family therapy and the history of spirituality, and I was one of the members of the pastoral team at the Jesuit school of St. Ignatius. This is how I returned to the roots of spirituality and school, working with the youth.

For the past seven years in Riga, I served the Lithuanians living there and led the Latvian parish community of the Marupe microdistrict, and for some time I was the chaplain of the Riga Higher Institute of Religious Sciences.

Now I come to Vilnius University to work in the field of pastoral care with students of a different age and maturity.

You will take care of the academic pastoral care of the university community, provide spiritual support and counseling. What other duties will you perform?

Jesuits are characterised by a holistic approach to a person – to guess and feel what he or she needs, how to help achieve harmony (the so-called principle of cura personalis), because it is understandable that students, employees or lecturers have their own different needs. Realising that the spiritual state is an integral part of each of our health, the pastoral team aims to help people, through faith in a higher power, God, to name, accept and defend their own dignity, without violating the self-esteem of other people. It is quite difficult for young people studying at university (like all of us) to achieve that spiritual harmony by ensuring their intellectual growth, assimilating knowledge, skills, while nurturing emotional intelligence and spiritual hygiene and culture. It is important for me to provide human spiritual help in various ways and periods: whether through intellectual-worldview discussions, or by expressing consolation when burying a loved one, breaking up with a loved one, being left or rejected, burning out or feeling sadness, being depressed.

Which activity, help or support for the community do you think is the most relevant during this period?

Due to the war going on near us or other domestic or work-related difficulties in life, people's anxiety and insecurity is every more prevalent. Probably depending on experience and age, we try to secure an acceptable, stable environment in different ways. Therefore, I try to look at what kind of help a person needs individually, carefully, without imposing my own attitude. Some of my accumulated experience allows me to feel the person with my listening eyes, to hear what he or she says, and this could be considered to be my listening service.

We know that there is a constant questioning of the dialogue between science and faith. Today the aggressive cynical, mocking attitude of atheism towards the spiritual world, the believing person, is felt constantly increasing. I myself have experienced this hesitation, raising the question of how an educated person can believe in God, why is it necessary to fill up some gaps in knowledge with God. When we meet such atheistic people who believe that there is no God, it often turns out that they do not have a clear value system or a consistent way of life, they behave in a way that is more comfortable to them in each situation. Naturally, a person must always have various doubts, there are questions that are difficult to find answers to. Whatever they are, our task is to strengthen people's confidence and their own values, endurance of being themselves, combined with openness to dissenters and diversity. It is important to take responsibility for how my expression, based on my values, affects the society around me.

Do you already have any ideas when and how the All-Hallows mass, Advent evening for the community will take place?

As every year, we will invite the university community to the All-Hallows Mass, remember their deceased loved ones and dear colleagues who have passed away, and will pray together and give thanks to those who understand the importance of donation, serve people and are generous to life not only while alive, but also share generously even after death. A donation, when people legally agree to donate their organs to the living, or giving their bodies after death to students in the name of education, represents a great culture of generosity and self-sacrifice, so we must remember these people, name them, thank their families, thus promoting this open and noble culture in society. It is not for nothing that during All Hallows' Eve and All Saints’ Day we talk about the importance of striving for human maturity (holiness) and the indestructibility of the human person, and his suitability for eternal life. Even though the body is fragile and limited, we believe that there is God who prolongs our existence. This is what sustains our spirit as Christians, the people who believe in a resurrection.

On Advent evening, we will also meet and prepare for the celebration of the birth of Christ. The appearance and life of Jesus of Nazareth as a human is a revolutionary event in the course of history and civilizations, bringing compassion, attention to the weak and little ones and the hope that we are all dignified, children of God. In the season of Advent, we are waiting for that liberator and savior who would give us support and establish our need to live.

What other meaningful activities would you like to implement while working and communicating with students and Vilnius University employees and colleagues?

We all understand that a person's work activity occupies only a part of his or her life. As a Jesuit and a member of a religious community, I feel a great responsibility to continue the tradition that helped to establish this university and for it to exist as it is by educating competent people who are willing and able to serve their society. This aspect of serving the society and the state is important to me, paying attention to the fact that it is necessary to be vigilant so that neither the professorship nor the top management nor the students become self-important, intoxicated by their talents, superiority or achievements, so as not to become hard-hearted infants of success. Therefore, I am very happy that in order to follow this path of service to society (it seems to be one of the priorities), the university is fostering a tradition of volunteering. Volunteering does not only mean helping others, as this activity provides a strong impulse to grow yourself, motivate and satisfy your need to be a noble person.
Another constant aspiration is to be responsible and respectful to our Mother Earth, to consciously support and develop the ideas of sustainability and greenness in the university and society.

On 10 November, at 18:00, a Holy Mass will be offered in the VU St. John's Church for the dead of the university community.
On 15 December, at 18:00, a traditional Advent-Christmas evening will be held in the same place.