ACI Prensa Staff, 14 November, 2025 / 7:04 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Leo XIV on Friday urged academics to “think the faith” in order to confront what he called an increasingly pervasive “cultural emptiness.”
The pope spoke at a ceremony inaugurating the academic year at Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University, the ecclesiastical university under the direct control of the Holy See, an event that brought together more than a thousand students and professors.
In his address, Pope Leo XIV highlighted what he called the Lateran University’s unique and “altogether special” bond with the successor of Peter, a characteristic that he said has shaped its identity and mission from the beginning. He recalled the contributions of various pontiffs since its founding in 1773 and described the Lateran as “a privileged center where the teaching of the universal Church is elaborated, received, developed, and contextualized.”
“Today we urgently need to think the faith so that we can express it in contemporary cultural settings and challenges, but also to counter the risk of cultural emptiness, which in our time is becoming increasingly invasive,” he said.
The pope noted that the faculty of theology is called “to reflect on the deposit of faith and to manifest its beauty and credibility in today’s diverse contexts,” while the study of philosophy “must be oriented toward the search for truth.”
