Pope Francis: Education is above all a matter of love and responsibility

“We consider education to be one of the most effective ways of making our world and history more human. Education is above all a matter of love and responsibility handed down from one generation to another”. With these words, Pope Francis encouraged the concretization of the “Global Compact on Education”. This he mentioned in his video message during the Global Compact on Education event, which took place on October 15, 2020, at the Pontifical Lateran University with the virtual participation of people from all over the world.

During the encounter, the Pope Francis and other key contributors, drowned from the Academia, dwelt on the current threats facing Education and how it should be tackled in order to avoid the “culture of waste and educational catastrophe”; these words were at the center of the Pope’s key note address.

The 4 areas identified as major discipline to be acquired and applied are: Human Dignity and Human Rights, Integral Ecology, Peace and Citizenship Education and Solidarity and Development.

In his concluding words, the Pope invites all concerned with education to reflect and put into practice the following 7 (seven) points and on which we should focus our efforts:

1. to make human persons in their value and dignity the centre of every educational programme, both formal and informal, in order to foster their distinctiveness, beauty and uniqueness, and their capacity for relationship with others and with the world around them, while at the same time teaching them to reject lifestyles that encourage the spread of the throwaway culture.
2. to listen to the voices of children and young people to whom we pass on values and knowledge, in order to build together a future of justice, peace and a dignified life for every person.
3. to encourage the full participation of girls and young women in education.
4. to see in the family the first and essential place of education.
5. to educate and be educated on the need for acceptance and in particular openness to the most vulnerable and marginalized.
6. to be committed to finding new ways of understanding the economy, politics, growth and progress that can truly stand at the service of the human person and the entire human family, within the context of an integral ecology.
7. to safeguard and cultivate our common home, protecting it from the exploitation of its resources, and to adopt a more sober lifestyle marked by the use of renewable energy sources and respect for the natural and human environment, in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity and a circular economy.

The commitment is to follow these guidelines which will be of great help in overcoming the great moment of difficulty that we are going through worldwide. We are all invited to identify with this invitation and to put into practice in our various fields of school or social ministry in the Institute.

The Education Commission of the USG and UISG

On the occasion of the world meeting organized by the Holy See, the Union of Superiors General (UISG and USG), with the active participation of the Secretariat for Education and Evangelization of the Marist Institute, made a video with some experiences and proposals on the four challenges of the Educational Compact. Thirteen congregations dedicated to education collaborated on the video.