‘Spirit of Teilhard de Chardin’ hovers over Lateran Basilica meeting, Vatican newspaper reports
March 31, 2025
“The spirit of Teilhard de Chardin, the multifaceted Jesuit, the 70th anniversary of whose death is being commemorated in these days, hovered over the meeting that took place this morning in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, from the beginning to the end,” L’Osservatore Romano reported in its March 29 edition.
Staff journalist Guglielmo Gallone’s article follows a two-page, six-article tribute to the French philosopher and paleontologist in the Vatican newspaper’s March 27 edition, including a book preface by Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, the prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. Like the articles before it, Gallone’s article made no reference to Father Teilhard’s views on race and eugenics, which have attracted increasing scholarly scrutiny over the past decade.
The March 29 event in the Lateran Basilica was organized by CENSIS, an Italian research agency. Speakers—including Cardinal Baldassare Reina, the vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, and Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ, undersecretary for the Dicastery for Culture and Education—discussed a CENSIS analysis of declining Catholic practice in Italy. Gallone reported that the basilica, the Pope’s cathedral, was full.
Referring to Father Teilhard (1881-1955)—whose writings were the subject of a 1962 Holy Office warning--Gallone wrote that “the CENSIS document, the basis of the discussion, significantly reports the affirmation of the French theologian, for whom ‘the Church will perish if it will not escape quantitative sacramentalism, to reincarnate in concrete human aspirations.’”
“Catholics must help the world ‘go onward and upward,’ as Teilhard said,” Giuseppe De Rita, the 92-year-old CENSIS founder, told participants.
Father Spadaro said that one ought not to “create a polarization between God and the world, but love and follow God in the world”—“aware that, as Teilhard recalled, ‘Everything that rises converges,’” according to Gallone’s summary of Spadaro’s remarks.
For all current news, visit our News home page.
All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a current donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!
