Vatican City, 6 February 2015 (VIS) –
Yesterday afternoon Pope Francis participated in the closing ceremony
of the Fourth World Congress organised by Scholas Occurrentes, held
in the Vatican from 2 to 5 February on the theme “Responsibility of
all in education for a culture of encounter”. The international
network of schools, “Scholas Occurrentes – schools for encounter”
was established with a small number of children in Buenos Aires at
the behest of the then-Archbishop Bergoglio and currently involves
four hundred state and religious schools in five continents, linked
through sports, art and technology. During the ceremony, Pope Francis
held a video-conference with seven disabled children from different
parts of the world, to whom he said, “Each one of us has a
treasure inside. If we keep it locked up, it stays locked up inside;
if we share it with others, the treasure multiplies with the treasure
that comes from others”. The Pope also remarked that, thanks to
them, we understand that “life is a beautiful treasure, but it
makes sense only if it is given”.
He went on to speak of a “broken
educational pact”. “Society, the family, and various institutions
delegate education to teachers who, generally underpaid, bear the
burden of this responsibility and are berated if the outcome is not
successful; however, no-one looks to the various institutions that
have broken the educational pact, who have delegated it to the
professionalism of teachers”. He paid homage to those teachers “who
have found themselves with this hot potato in their hands and have
made efforts to keep going”.
Francis explained that the aim of
Scholas Occurrentes is to reintegrate the efforts of all in
education, and to harmoniously rebuild the educational pact, “as
only in this way, if all those of us who are responsible for the
education of our young act in together, can we change education”.
He also emphasised the importance of “harmonising the language of
the head with that of the heart and of the hands, so that a person, a
boy or a girl, thinks about what he feels and does, feels what he
thinks and does, and does what he feels and thinks”.
He highlighted every person and every
people's search for “the beauty we create with our art, our music,
our painting, our sculpture, our literature. Educate in beauty,
because harmony means beauty, and we cannot achieve harmony in our
educational system without having this perception of beauty”. He
concluded by thanking Scholas Occurrentes for its achievements and,
while he acknowledged that many problems remained to be solved, he
encouraged the organisation to continue its work. “Joint work and
monitoring are necessary, so that this spark may become a flame, and
may help to rebuild and harmonise the educational pact. Those who
benefit from this are the young, and the young are the future”.
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