Pope Leo XIV has urged Catholic teachers to focus less on pre-professional outcomes and more on educating students to have rich spiritual lives and use technology in ways that keep human dignity front and centre. Source: NCR Online.
The Pope yesterday issued a set of marching orders to Catholic educators during a special Holy Year celebration that has brought thousands of teachers, students and administrators to Rome.
The brief text, which Leo signed Monday at a Mass for the Jubilee pilgrims, is an update to a 1965 Vatican document laying out the priorities for Catholic educators that was adopted during the Second Vatican Council. Its title in Italian is Disegnare Nuove Mappe di Speranza, which could be translated as “Drawing New Maps of Hope”.
The Catholic Church is one of the world’s leading players in education, operating more than 225,000 primary and secondary schools and enrolling some 2.5 million students at Catholic universities around the globe, according to Vatican statistics.
In the text, Leo repeated that parents are the primary educators for their children and that Catholic schools must cooperate with them, not take their place. And he said Catholic teachers must themselves be models for their students.
“Educators are called to a responsibility that goes beyond their work contract: their witness is worth as much as their lessons,” he wrote, calling for ongoing training for Catholic teachers in both academic and spiritual fields.
Pope Leo said Catholic education isn’t measured in efficiencies or output but rather “in dignity, justice and the capacity to serve the common good.”
Such a vision, he said, “goes against a purely mercantilist approach that often forces education today to be measured in terms of functionality and practical utility.”
He cited priorities Pope Francis had listed for Catholic educators, which emphasised inclusion, ecology and the common good, and added three more: Catholic educators should emphasise the interior spiritual life of students, use a “disarmed and disarming” language that eschews violence, and promote a responsible use of technology, including artificial intelligence, that keeps human dignity foremost.
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Pope urges Catholic teachers to focus less on professional outcomes, more on spiritual lives (By Nicole Winfield, AP via NCR Online)
