Pope Francis on September 12, 2019, issued a message supporting the Global Educational Alliance, an initiative to bring people together from around the world to promote care for the earth. The Vatican will host a meeting on 14 May 2020 in the Paul VI Hall to reflect on the theme “Reinventing the Global Educational Alliance”.
“In my Encyclical
Laudato Si’,
I invited everyone to cooperate in caring for our common home and to confront together the challenges that we face,” the Holy Father recalled. “Now, a few years later, I
renew my invitation to dialogue on how we are shaping the future of our planet and the need to employ the talents of all since all change requires an educational process aimed at developing a new universal solidarity and a more welcoming society.”The Pope, in endorsing the project, said there is a need for a broad alliance to bring together people from all walks of life to care for our “common home.” He said an important first step is to train people so they can serve the community.
“We have to create such a village before we can educate,” the Pope said. “In the first place, the ground must be cleared of discrimination and fraternity must be allowed to flourish…In this kind of village, it is easier to find global agreement about an education that integrates and respects all aspects of the person, uniting studies and everyday life, teachers, students, and their families, and civil society in its intellectual, scientific, artistic, athletic, political, business and charitable dimensions.”
Following is the Holy Father’s full statement
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Every change calls for an educational process that involves everyone. There is thus a need to create an “educational village”, in which all people, according to their respective roles, share the task of forming a network of open, human relationships. According to an African proverb, “it takes a whole village to educate a child”. We have to create such a village before we can educate. In the first place, the ground must be cleared of discrimination and fraternity must be allowed to flourish, as I stated in the Document that I signed with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar on 4 February this year in Abu Dhabi. In this kind of village, it is easier to find global agreement about an education that integrates and respects all aspects of the person, uniting studies and everyday life, teachers, students and their families, and civil society in its intellectual, scientific, artistic, athletic, political, business and charitable dimensions. An alliance, in other words, between the earth’s inhabitants and our “common home”, which we are bound to care for and respect. An alliance that generates peace, justice, and hospitality among all peoples of the human family, as well as dialogue between religions.
To reach these global objectives, our shared journey as an “educating village” must take important steps forward. First, we must have the courage to place the human person at the center. To do so, we must agree to promote formal and informal educational processes that cannot ignore the fact that the whole world is deeply interconnected, and that we need to find other ways, based on a sound anthropology, of envisioning economics, politics, growth, and progress. In the development of a integral ecology, a central place must be given to the value proper to each creature in its relationship to the people and realities surrounding it, as well as a lifestyle that rejects the throw-away culture.
Another step is to find the courage to capitalize on our best energies, creatively and responsibly. To be proactive and confident in opening education to a long-term vision unfettered by the status quo. This will result in men and women who are open, responsible, prepared to listen, dialogue and reflect with others, and capable of weaving relationships with families, between generations, and with civil society, and thus to create a new humanism.
For this reason, I look forward to meeting in Rome all of you who, in various ways and on every level, work in the field of education and of research. I encourage you to work together to promote, through a shared educational alliance, those forward-looking initiatives that can give direction to history and change it for the better. I join you in appealing to authoritative public figures in our world who are concerned for the future of our young people, and I trust that they will respond to my invitation. I also call upon you, dear young people, to take part in the meeting and to sense your real responsibility for the building of a better world.
