Extracts from Apostolic Letter DRAWING NEW MAPS OF HOPEof Pope Leo XIV on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the Conciliar Declaration Gravissimumeducationis
3. A living tradition
3.1. Christian education is a collective endeavour: no one educates alone. The educational community is a “we” where teachers, students, families, administrative and service staff, pastors and civil society converge to generate life [7]. This “we” prevents water from stagnating in the swamp of “it has always been done this way” and forces it to flow, to nourish, to irrigate. The foundation remains the same: the person, image of God ( Gen 1:26), capable of truth and relationship. Therefore, the question of the relationship between faith and reason is not an optional chapter: “Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition of general knowledge” [8]. These words of Saint John Henry Newman – whom, in the context of this Jubilee of the World of Education, I have the great joy of declaring co-patron of the Church’s educational mission together with Saint Thomas Aquinas – are an invitation to renew our commitment to knowledge that is as intellectually responsible and rigorous as it is deeply human.... We need to emerge from the shallows by recovering an empathic and open vision, and to understand better how humankind understands itself today in order to develop and deepen our teaching. This is why desire and the heart must not be separated from knowledge: it would mean splitting the person. Catholic universities and schools are places where questions are not silenced, and doubt is not banished, but accompanied. The heart, there, dialogue with the heart, and the method is that of listening that recognizes the other as an asset, not a thread. Cor ad cor loquitur was Saint John Henry Newman's cardinal’s motto, taken from a letter of Saint Francis de Sales: “Sincerity of heart, not abundance of words, touches the hearts of men”.
3.2. Educating is an act of hope and a passion that is renewed because it manifests the promise we see in the future of humanity [9]. The specificity, depth and breadth of educational action is the work – as mysterious as it is real – of “making the being flourish [...] is taking care of the soul”, ...
4. The compass of Gravissimumeducationis
4.1. The Conciliar Declaration Gravissimumeducationis reaffirms the right of every person to education, and indicates the family as the first school of humanity. The ecclesial community is called upon to support environments that integrate faith and culture, respect the dignity of all, and engage in dialogue with society. The document warns against reducing education to functional training or an economic tool: a person is not a “skills profile”, cannot be reduced to a predictable algorithm, but is a face, a story, a vocation.
4.2. Christian formation embraces the entire person: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social, physical. It does not pit manual and theoretical skills, science and humanism, technology and conscience against each other; rather, it demands that professionalism be imbued with ethics, and that ethics be not an abstract concept but a daily practice. Education does not measure its value only on the axis of efficiency: it measures it according to dignity, justice, the capacity to serve the common good. This integral anthropological vision must remain the cornerstone of Catholic pedagogy. Following in the wake of the thought of Saint John Henry Newman, it goes against a strictly mercantilist approach that often forces education today to be measured in terms of functionality and practical utility [11].
4.3. These principles are not memories from the past. They are guiding stars. They say that the truth is sought together; that freedom is not a whim, but an answer; that authority is not domination, but service. In the educational context, one must never “claim to possess a monopoly on truth, either in its analysis of problems or its proposal of concrete solutions” [12]. Instead, “knowing best how to approach them is more important than providing immediate responses to why things happen or how to deal with them. The aim is to learn how to confront problems, for these are always different, since every generation is new, and faces new challenges, dreams and questions” [13]. Catholic education has the task of rebuilding trust in a world riven with conflicts and fears, remembering that we are sons and daughters, not orphans; fraternity is born of this awareness.
5. The centrality of the person
5.1. Putting the person at the centre means educating them to see with the far-sightedness of Abraham ( Gen 15:5): helping them discover the meaning of life, their inalienable dignity, and their responsibility towards others. Education is not only the transmission of content, but also the learning of virtues. It forms citizens capable of serving and believers capable of witnessing, men and women who are freer, no longer alone. And formation cannot be improvised. I fondly remember the years I spent in the beloved Diocese of Chiclayo, visiting the Catholic University of San Toribio de Mogrovejo, the opportunities I had to address the academic community, saying: “We are not born professionals; every university itinerary is built step by step, book by book, year by year, sacrifice after sacrifice” [14].
5.2. The Catholic school is an environment in which faith, culture and life intertwine. It is not simply an institution, but rather a living environment in which the Christian vision permeates every discipline and every interaction. Educators are called to a responsibility that goes beyond the work contract: their witness has the same value as their lessons. For this reason, the formation of teachers – scientific, pedagogic, cultural and spiritual – is decisive. Sharing the common educational mission also demands a path of common formation, “an initial and permanent project of formation that is able to grasp the educational challenges of the present time and to provide the most effective tools for dealing with them… This implies that educators must be willing to learn and develop knowledge and be open to the renewal and updating of methodologies, but open also to spiritual and religious formation and sharing” [15]. Technical updates are not enough: it is necessary to cultivate a heart that listens, a gaze that encourages, and an intelligence that discerns.
5.3. The family remains the first place of education. Catholic schools collaborate with parents; they do not substitute them, because the “duty … devolves primarily on them” [16]. The educational alliance requires intentionality, listening and co-responsibility. It is built with processes, tools, shared assessments. It is both hard work and a blessing: when it works, it inspires trust; when it fails, everything becomes more fragile.
