Agreement on more precise arrangement of the status and membership of the Faculty of Islamic Sciences and the Catholic Faculty of Theology within the University of Sarajevo was signed yesterday by the Prime Minister of the Sarajevo Canton Elmedin Konaković, Cardinal Vinko Puljić and the Reis ul-Ulema of the Islamic Community in BiH Husein Effendi Kavazović.
“With this agreement, Sarajevo and BIH enter one European program. With this agreement we respect our reality, aware of cultural and religious differences and in this way we point to the fact that we are ready to respect each other in that diversity,” said Puljić.
Faculties of theology in BiH have a long history and they are somehow the originators of high education in BiH; it was stated during the signing of this agreement.
Kavazović said that he hopes that these faculties will continue having a humanistic function and develop in young people the sense for good and responsibility. He also stated that he expects the University of Sarajevo to include the third theological faculty in its system, the Orthodox one, which has existed in Sarajevo even before.
According to Konaković, equality of theological faculties within the academic community is very important and until now these faculties have been neglected and marginalized, which hindered their work because the Sarajevo Canton did not finance them.
“Faculty of Islamic Sciences and the Catholic Faculty of Theology are equal members of the University of Sarajevo, their deans are members of the Senate, and they are financed from the tranche of 66.5 million BAM,” said Konaković, who thanked the academic community in the Sarajevo Canton and the deans of the faculties who gave up on one part of their tranche in order to finance the work of these two faculties.
(Source: radiosarajevo.ba)