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Pope Francis’ address to Uniservitate Global Symposium,
“Service-learning and the Global Compact on Education”
Clementine Hall – Saturday, 9 November 2024
Your Eminence, dear brothers and sisters,
Your meeting is of particular interest to the Church, which St. Paul VI liked to describe as “an expert in humanity”’ (Address to the United Nations Organization, 1).
Those words are both eloquent and demanding; they challenge us to give them concrete expression in our work as educators.
I am thinking of the film Dead Poets Society, which tells how a literature teacher arrives at a prestigious boarding school with a very original method.
He begins his first lesson with a small challenge: he asks the students to stand on their desks and see the class from another point of view.
This episode suggests what education should be, not just the transmission of content – which is only one aspect – but it should be transformation of life.
(This is what education must be) not simply the repetition of formulas, like parrots, but training see the complexity of our world.
In Jesus’ own pedagogy, this “style” is quite evident.
We see it in one of Jesus’ favorite forms of teaching: the parables.
By telling stories, the Lord did not speak in an abstract language that could only be understood by the élite. He spoke in a way that was simple and accessible to all, and understood by all.
A parable is a story that allows the listener to enter into the narrative, to become involved and to identify with the characters.
Jesus wanted his listeners not only to understand the message, but to become personally involved in it.
Contrary to this style, today’s globalization poses a risk for education, namely a process of levelling towards certain programs, often subordinated to political and economic interests.
This trend towards uniformity conceals forms of ideological conditioning, which distort the work of education, turning it into an instrument of interests quite different from the promotion of human dignity and the search for truth.
Ideology always “suffocates”, it does not allow development. It always suffocates.
Therefore, one should be careful to defend oneself against ideologies.
Since “we cannot change the world unless we change education”, we need to reflect together on how to initiate and guide this change.
To meet this challenge, it is interesting to see how Uniservitate has developed the pedagogical method of “service-learning”, promoting a sense of community responsibility among students through social projects that are an integral part of their academic program.
In this way, Catholic educational institutions live up to their name.
For any school or university, being “Catholic” is more than having a distinguished adjective in its name. Being Catholic is a commitment to a distinctive style of education and teaching that is consistent with the teachings of the Gospel.
It is not an evangelical ideology. No, it a Gospel humanism!.
In this respect, Uniservitate consistently responds to the intentions of the ‘Global Compact on Education’ by cultivating educational processes that involve everyone.
I have often repeated an African proverb that says ‘it takes an entire village to educate a child’.
Let us make every effort, then, to build such an “educational village”, where we can work together to promote positive and culturally fruitful human relationships.
Through these close relationships, an educational covenant can surely be formed between all those who work for the personal growth of the individual in its various scientific, political, artistic, sporting and other aspects.
Education is not a process that ends when we leave the classroom or the library.
It continues throughout life, in our daily encounters with others and in the paths we take.
Listening to one another, reflecting on dialogue: this is the path of education.
The covenant which I invite you to cultivate should bear fruits of peace, justice and mutual acceptance among all peoples and extend its positive effects in ever closer forms of cooperation.
This cooperation can foster interreligious dialogue and care for our common home.
We all know that the task is not easy, but it is certainly exciting!
Educating is an adventure, a great adventure.
Faced with this challenge, Catholic schools of every kind and level are called to courageously make the necessary changes, l drawing inspiration for their activities from the teaching of Jesus, our common teacher.
In order to promote coherence between the various initiatives, I would encourage you to consider in particular two principles drawn from the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: “Realities are more important than ideas” (Nos. 231-233) and always “The whole is always greater than the part” (Nos. 234-237).
First, an educational program should bring students into contact with the realities around them, so that they learn experience to change the world not for their own benefit, but in a spirit of service.
Contact with reality so as not to get lost in ideas.
Secondly, Catholic education should foster a “culture of curiosity”. Have you heard of this?
A wise man once said that a culture of curiosity is not the same as the culture of gossip, no, they have nothing to do with each other.
A culture of curiosity values the art of asking questions.
This is what children teach us in the period known as “why”: “Dad, why? Mom, why?”.
I am reminded of something that has touched me deeply.
I was taken to have my tonsils removed.
There was no anaesthesia in those days and it was done in a very practical way:
The nurse took me and held me down so you could not move.
They used a device to keep my mouth open, and with two forceps, pop, and that was it.
Then they gave me an ice cream to clot my blood.
On the way out, my dad called a cab and we went home and in the end he paid for the cab.
The next day, when I could talk, I said to him, “Dad, why did you pay for the cab?”
“Because…”, and he explained what the taxi was.
“But Dad, aren’t all the cabs in town yours?” “No!”
It was a great disappointment, because my father did not own all the cabs.
The children’s “why” sometimes comes from disappointment or curiosity.
We listen to children’s questions, and we learn how to ask them.
This helps us a lot. I call this a culture of curiosity.
Children are curious, in the good sense of the word.
The art of asking questions.
Let us support young people in this exploration of themselves and the wider world, without reducing knowledge to mental skills, but complementing those skills with manual dexterity and the generosity born of a passionate heart.
Education is not only through the mind, but also through the heart and the hands.
We must learn to think what we feel and do, to feel what we do and think, to do what we feel and think.
This is education: it is a threefold language.
Here is a good way to accomplish this urgent task.
“In this ‘liquid’ world of ours, we must begin again to speak from the heart because it is only by starting from the heart that our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling different minds and wills, so that the Spirit may lead us in unity as brothers and sisters” (Encyclical Letter Dilexit Nos – (He loved us), 9.28).
Perhaps the greatest enemies on the path to maturity are ideologies.
Ideologies do not make us grow.
Every type of ideology is the enemy of maturity.
I thank you for all you do.
May the Lord always keep alive in you the passion for education.
I cordially bless you, and I ask you to remember me in your prayers.
