Vatican City, Feb 20,
2020 / 10:08 am
(CNA).- Pope Francis
called for an edu-
cational revolution
Thursday, telling the Congregation
for Catholic Education that more
effort needs to be made to accelerate
the inclusiveness of education.
Ecology and fraternity are an inte-
gral part of education, Pope Francis
told the Catholic education leaders
ahead of the pope’s Global Compact
on Education taking place May 14.
“The educational pact must not be a
simple order, it must not be a rehash
of the positivisms we have received
from an Enlightenment education. It
must be revolutionary,” Pope Francis
said Feb. 20.
The pope said that the purpose
of an “education that focuses on
the person in his integral reality” is
“above all” oriented “to the discovery
of fraternity that produces the multi-
cultural composition of humanity.”
Pope Francis called for educators
capable of resetting their teaching
methods to form young people in an
“ecological ethic.” He said education
is a “dynamic reality,” which is “never
a repetitive action.”
“Education is called with its pac-
ifying force to form people capable
of understanding that diversity does
not hinder unity, rather they are in-
dispensable for the richness of one’s
own identity and that of everyone,”
Francis said.
“As for the method, education is an
inclusive movement. An inclusion
that goes towards all the excluded:
those for poverty, for vulnerability
due to wars, famines and natural dis-
asters, for social selectivity, for family
and existential difficulties,” he said.
Educational intiativies for migrants
and refugees should be put into ac-
tion “without any distinction of sex,
religion, or ethnicity,” the pope told
the congregation.
Pope Francis said a “peace-making
educational movement” is needed
in light of the fractures between
cultures masking a “fear of diversity
and difference.”
“Inclusion is not a modern inven-
tion, but is an integral part of the
Christian salvific message,” Pope
Francis said.
The pope addressed the plenary
assembly of the Congregation for
Catholic Education. The congre-
gation oversees 216,000 Catholic
schools attended by over 60 million
pupils, and 1,750 Catholic universi-
ties with over 11 million students.
The congregation devotes particular
attention to institutions of Catholic
higher education, which exist “by
their nature aim to secure that the
Christian outlook should acquire a
public, stable and universal influence
in the whole process of the promo-
tion of higher culture,” according to
St. John Paul II’s 1979 apostolic con-
stitution on ecclesiastical universities
and faculties, Sapientia Christiana.
Ex corde Ecclesiae, St. John Paul
II’s 1990 apostolic constitution on
Catholic universities, states that “A
Catholic university’s privileged task
is to unite existentially by intellec-
tual effort two orders of reality that
too frequently tend to be placed
in opposition as though they were
antithetical: the search for truth, and
the certainty of already knowing the
fount of truth.”
“Every human reality, both indi-
vidual and social has been liberated
by Christ: persons, as well as the ac-
tivities of men and women, of which
culture is the highest and incarnate
expression…. Jesus Christ, our Sav-
iour, offers his light and his hope to
all those who promote the sciences,
the arts, letters and the numerous
fields developed by modern culture,”
it states. “Therefore, all the sons and
daughters of the Church should
become aware of their mission and
discover how the strength of the
Gospel can penetrate and regenerate
the mentalities and dominant values
that inspire individual cultures, as
well as the opinions and mental atti-
tudes that are derived from it.”
Pope Francis has tasked the Con-
gregation for Catholic Education
with organizing his Global Educa-
tional Summit.
When the educational pact was first
announced in September, “the most
significant personalities of the po-
litical, cultural and religious world”
were invited to attend.
The foundation of the pact is
“openness to others,” according to
the instrumentum laboris for the
education summit.
aim of the Global Education Pact
is to “renew the passion for a more
open and inclusive education, capa-
ble of patient listening, constructive
dialogue, and mutual understand-
ing,” Pope Francis told the congre-
gation.
