COMMENCEMENT — Members of the Franciscan University of Steubenville Class of 2023 share a moment during Saturday’s commencement exercises. -- Linda Harris

STEUBENVILLE — Franciscan University of Steubenville celebrated the largest graduating class in school history Saturday, conferring degrees on 813 students.

That eclipses the mark set a year ago when 795 students received their degrees.

“It’s our Super Bowl,” the Rev. Dave Pivonka, TOR, president of the university, said. “It’s the families, their students, their dreams. It’s just a wonderful, wonderful occasion, particularly given COVID. This class was freshmen when COVID happened and they were sent home. Much of their academic career was disrupted, so to be able to come in and see it end was a great blessing.”

Commencement speaker was Lila Rose, who founded Live Action when she was just 15 and grew it into an international organization.

Rose, who received an honorary doctorate of Christian ethics, reminded the graduates they’d just received four years of “in-depth theological and philosophical formation.”

“You got to go to Catholic Disneyland and you received some of the best Catholic formation that any institution of learning offers in this country,” Rose said. “You are singularly prepared to go out into the world and discern truth from lies and lies from truth.”

She said the world is facing a “great crisis of truth.”

“People today do not know the truth: When I look at you, I see excitement, I see courage and I see the vision to go out and change the world,” she said, pointing out, “Jesus wasn’t safe but He was good. Dangerously good.”

“Our world today needs men and women of conviction who are ‘dangerously good,'” she said. “We are living in a time of great confusion, confusion about good. Destructive ideologies have subverted our understanding…of identity, of goodness.

“You live in a once-Christian culture where many people are jaded and apathetic about what they think Christianity is and what it means to be a Christian, and they’ve rejected it. This makes the grip of bad ideologies even stronger and the need for dangerously good disciples even greater.”

She told the graduates “a dangerously good person is a visionary … someone who sees with expansive vision the possibilities in every person.”

“Share the truth, practice your faith to work, marry have children and build communities,” Rose said. “The world needs each one of you to be the next generation of community builders who invite others into their homes, get off their phones and screens and make connections in real life. Love is where our faith came from and how it’s best communicated.”

Pivonka said his message to the Class of 2023 is to follow their faith, reminding them life is always going to have storms.

“We need to stay together in the boat, it’s the safest place to be,” he said. “And every now and then they’re going to be invited to walk on water … Today we’re saying it’s time for them to move on and walk on water.”