Call on others to broaden horizons, ‘overflow with inner vitality,’ Pope tells Vatican culture, education dicastery

November 22, 2024

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CWN Editor's Note: Pope Francis challenged the members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education to see their mission as “calling upon others to broaden their horizons, to overflow with inner vitality, to make space for new possibilities and, in sharing the gifts they have received, to make them abound all the more.”

“Our world does not need automatons that simply repeat what has already been said and done; it needs new choreographers, new interpreters of our rich human resources, new social poets,” the Pope said on November 21.

“Educational models that aim merely to produce ‘results’ are useless in the absence of a cultural vision capable of forming persons prepared to help the world change gears by eliminating inequality, endemic poverty and exclusion,” he continued, lamenting that “some 250 million children and adolescents do not attend school. We are morally obliged to change this situation.”

The Pontiff added:

We have no reason for fear. First, because Christ is our guide and travelling companion. Secondly, because we are guardians of a cultural and educational heritage that is greater than ourselves.

We are heirs to the profound thought of Augustine. We are heirs to the poetry of Ephraim the Syrian. We are heirs to the medieval cathedral schools and the founders of the first universities. Heirs to Thomas Aquinas and Edith Stein, and to those who commissioned the works of Fra Angelico and Mozart, and more recently of Mark Rothko and Olivier Messiaen. We are heirs to the innumerable artists inspired by the mysteries of Christ. Heirs to great scientists and thinkers like Blaise Pascal. In a word, heirs to the passion for education and culture of countless saints and holy men and women.

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