Pope Francis: to Congregation for Catholic Education, “unite efforts in a broad educational alliance”

An “ecological movement”; an “inclusive movement”; a “peace-making movement”; a “team movement”. This is how Pope Francis described education as he received in audience the participants in the Plenary of the Congregation for Catholic Education. Education, he said, “that has at its centre the person as a whole has the purpose of bringing him to the knowledge of himself, of the common house in which he is placed to live, and above all to the discovery of fraternity as a relationship that produces the multicultural composition of humanity, a source of mutual enrichment”. Hence the need for educators to “develop an ethics of ecology, and help people, through effective pedagogy, to grow in solidarity, responsibility and compassionate care”. There is a need, Pope Francis remarked, to “accelerate this inclusive movement of education to counter the throwaway culture, which originates from the denial of fraternity as a constitutive element of humanity” and to counter “egolatry” that “generates non-peace, rifts between generations, between peoples, between cultures, between rich and poor populations, between men and women, between economy and ethics, between humanity and the environment”. “These fractures and oppositions, which ail relationships, conceal a fear of diversity and difference”, the Pope argued. For this reason, “education is required, with its pacifying force, to form people capable of understanding that diversity does not hinder unity; on the contrary, it is indispensable to the richness of one’s own identity and that of all people”. To support education as a “team movement”, Pope Francis said, “I felt the need to promote the Global Educational Pact Day this coming 14 May, entrusting the organization to the Congregation for Catholic Education”. Hence, he called on “all those who have political, administrative, religious and educational responsibilities to rebuild the ‘village of education’”. “Never before - the Pope stressed - has there been such a need to unite efforts in a broad educational alliance to form mature people, capable of overcoming fragmentation and opposition and rebuild the fabric of relationships for a more fraternal humanity”.
Valentina Bombelli