Pope Calls for Renewal of Catholic Education Amid Challenges of Modern Society, Technology

He also notes the importance of making Catholic education financially accessible.

“Where access to education remains a privilege, the Church must push open doors and invent new paths, because ‘losing the poor’ is equivalent to losing the school itself,” he writes.

Digital challenges

Pope Leo in his letter draws attention to the digital environment and its impact on education, underlining that “technologies must serve the person, not replace them. They must enrich the learning process, not impoverish relationships and communities.”

“A Catholic university and school without vision risks soulless efficiency, the standardization of knowledge, which then becomes spiritual impoverishment,” he says.

He urges schools to avoid “technophobia” while strengthening teachers’ training in the digital sphere and promoting service-learning and responsible citizenship.

“No algorithm can replace what makes education human: poetry, irony, love, art, imagination, the joy of discovery, and even education in error as an opportunity for growth. The decisive point is not technology but the use we make of it,” the pope writes.

What is Christian education?

The pontiff’s document also provides a vision of Christian education that “embraces the whole person: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social, and physical. … [Education] measures [its value] on the basis of dignity, justice, and the ability to serve the common good.”

He opposes this Catholic vision to a “purely mercantilistic approach” that measures education in terms of functionality and practical utility, he writes.

Leo said forming the whole person means avoiding compartmentalization, because “when faith is true, it is not an added ‘subject’ but a breath that oxygenates every other subject. Thus, Catholic education becomes leaven in the human community.”

Influence of St. John Henry Newman

The pope cites St. John Henry Newman, whom he will declare a new co-patron saint of the Church’s educational mission, throughout his letter. 

Quoting the saint and soon-to-be doctor of the Church, the pontiff writes that “religious truth is not only a part but a condition of general knowledge.”

These words, he explains, “are an invitation to renew our commitment to knowledge that is as intellectually responsible and rigorous as it is deeply human. We must also be careful not to fall into the enlightenment of a ‘fides’ [faith] that is exclusively paired with ‘ratio’ [reason].”

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He says this means Catholic universities and schools should be places where questions and doubt are accompanied, not silenced.

“There, the heart dialogues with the heart, and the method is that of listening, which recognizes the other as a good, not as a threat,” he says, pointing out that “cor ad cor loquitur” (“heart speaks to heart”) was St. John Henry Newman’s motto as a cardinal, taken from a letter of St. Francis de Sales: “Sincerity of heart, not abundance of words, touches the hearts of men.”

Leo points out that schools are communities of families, teachers, students, administrative and service staff, pastors, and civil society, founded on God.

The family remains the primary place of education, and “Catholic schools collaborate with parents, they do not replace them,” he affirms.

Ecological responsibility

The pontiff also touches briefly on Catholic schools’ responsibility in the social and ecological spheres.

“Forgetting our common humanity has led to divisions and violence; and when the earth suffers, the poor suffer most,” he writes. “Catholic education cannot remain silent: It must combine social justice and environmental justice, promote sobriety and sustainable lifestyles, and form consciences capable of choosing not only what is convenient but what is right.”