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Father Pedro Aguado Cuesta, Provost General of the Piarist Order, is organizing a conference for the Union of Superiors General and the International Union of Superiors General on the challenge of rebuilding the global educational pact, which will take place online from November 12th to 14th due to the pandemic. In the letter to Father Aguado Cuesta, the Pope asked for your indulgence that he could not attend it personally. Francis then goes into the importance and challenge of education today. The Piarist Order was founded in the 17th century by the Spanish saint José Calasanz.
Consecrated life has always been at the forefront of the educational task, emphasizes the Pope in his letter. He recalled the seven “central commitments of the Global Education Pact” that the Vatican wants to promote. On the basis of these seven commitments, he wants to summarize them in three concrete lines of action: concentrate, welcome and participate, explained the Pope.
Concentrate on the essentials
“To concentrate on the essentials means to put people in the center, their worth, their dignity, their own particularity, their beauty, their uniqueness and at the same time their ability to relate to others and to the reality around them , to be highlighted, ”writes Francis. Appreciation of the person makes education a means “by which our children and young people can grow and mature by acquiring the skills and resources necessary to build a future together in justice and peace”. It is essential to ensure “that we do not lose sight of the goal and that it is not lost in the means, projects and structures”. The church works for people “who form societies, and it is they who structure a single humanity that is called by God to be his chosen people”.
“We have to motivate our children and young people to learn relationships, to work in groups, to have an empathic attitude that rejects the culture of waste.”
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To achieve this, openness is necessary. This presupposes “that we listen to the other, the recipients of our service, the children and young people”. But it also implies that parents, pupils and authorities – “the main actors in the education system” – listen to other actors who are not only active in the actual education sector. “This will prevent them from closing in on their self-centeredness and opening them up to others. We have to motivate our children and young people to learn relationships, to work in groups, to have an empathic attitude that rejects the culture of waste, ”the Pope said literally. It is just as important that they learn “to protect our common house, to keep it from the exploitation of its resources, to adopt a more sober way of life and to seek the integral use of renewable energies that respect the human and natural environment”.
Integration of fellow human beings
The last line of action that the Pope explains is, from his point of view, the decisive one: the inclusion, i.e. the integration of fellow men. “The attitude of listening, which is defined in all these obligations, must not be understood as mere listening and forgetting, but must be a platform that enables everyone to actively participate in this educational work, each with their own particularity and responsibility . “
To get involved, assume that everyone would work to give children and young people the opportunity to “see this world that we leave them with a critical eye”. In this way young people would be able to understand the problems of the economy , politics , growth and progress and propose solutions “which are really in the service of man and the whole human family in the perspective of an integral ecology”.
(vatican news – mg)
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