Pope Leo XIV has commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Council Declaration Gravissimum educationis with the Apostolic Letter Designing New Maps of Hope (DNME) in the framework of the Jubilee of the educational world. This document underlines that education is not a marginal activity, but the “very fabric of evangelization” and the concrete way in which the Gospel becomes an educational gesture.
In the face of a complex, fragmented and digitalized environment, the Apostolic Letter offers a “compass” and a “cosmology of the Christian paideia” so that educational communities do not withdraw, but rather relaunch themselves, building bridges instead of walls.
We can be astonished to recognize the present confluence between the Apostolic Letter DNME and Our Proper Way of Educating (NMPE). The DNME offers us a solid compass for navigating today’s challenges, highlighting several points in common with the heart of our educational style.
In the following, we highlight the key points that trace the path of the educational mission expressed in DNME and we will make some reference to these confluences with NMP:
The Nonnegotiable Centrality of the Person
Both the Apostolic Letter and the NMPE insist on an integral anthropological vision that opposes any reductionism. The DNME insists on an integral anthropological vision as the central axis of Catholic pedagogy.
- Dignity and Vocation: The person is not just a “competency profile” or a predictable algorithm, but a “face, a story, a vocation.”
- Integral Formation: Formation should embrace the totality of the person: spiritual, intellectual, affective, social and corporal. It should not oppose the manual to the theoretical, nor science to humanism, but ensure that professionalism is imbued with ethics.
- Faith, Reason and Heart: we must not separate desire and heart from knowledge: it would mean breaking the person. The university and the Catholic school are places where questions are not silenced and doubt is not forbidden, but accompanied. There, the heart dialogues with the heart, and the method is that of listening that recognizes the other as an asset, not as a threat.
- Justice and Dignity: The value of education is measured in terms of dignity, justice and the capacity to serve the common good, and not only in terms of efficiency or practical market utility.
Our own way of educating (NMPE) has as its overall objective the development of the “whole person,” promoting growth in all aspects (individual and social). From the beginning, our educational tradition has revealed that the person is the object of God’s love and possesses a unique and inalienable dignity.
Education as a “Choral Work” and Act of Hope
In the Apostolic Letter, Christian education is defined as a “choral work”.
- The Educational “We”: No one educates alone. The educational community is a “we” in which teacher, student, family, staff, pastors and civil society converge to generate life.
- The Family, First Educator: The Declaration Gravissimum educationis reaffirms the universal right to education and points to the family as the first school of humanity. Schools should collaborate with parents, without substituting for them.
- The Educator’s Testimony: Educators have a responsibility that goes beyond the contract, and their testimony is worth as much as their lesson. This demands a permanent formation that is not only technical, but also spiritual, cultural and pedagogical.
- Office of Promises: Educating is an act of hope and a passion that is renewed because it manifests the promise we see in the future of humanity. It is an “office of promises”: it promises time, trust, competence; it promises justice and mercy, it promises the value of truth and the balm of consolation. Educating is a labor of love that is passed on from generation to generation, mending the torn fabric of relationships and restoring to words the weight of promise.
Here again we find several similarities with NMPE:
- Our document stresses that the dialogue between faith and culture is a key and characteristic element of integral education, where faith has a word to say and a proposal of meaning to make to the global posture towards life.
- NMPE is based on the educational community, in which all members (directors, educators, parents and students) are integrated in a shared mission. It seeks to overcome individualism, recognizing the learner as the center of action.
- It also establishes that the most effective teaching is by example, and that one educates by one’s own life, where the proclaimed values are assumed in a coherent manner.
The New Frontiers: Digitalization and Ecology
The Apostolic Letter addresses contemporary challenges, especially in the face of the unprecedented fragilities faced by young people:
- The Digital Human: While the Church is not hostile to technology, digital progress requires discernment. Pastoral creativity and a clear vision are needed to avoid falling into a soulless “efficiency”. It is crucial that technology serve the person, not replace him or her. No algorithm will replace what makes education human: poetry, the joy of discovery, imagination and love.
- Socio-Environmental Justice: Education must unite social justice and environmental justice, promoting sobriety and sustainable lifestyles. The Church has the duty to educate consciences to choose what is just, not only what is convenient.
- Unarmed Peace: An education for “unarmed and disarming” peace is required, which teaches to lay down the weapons of aggressive speech and to learn the language of mercy.
NMPE establishes the option of solidarity with those who suffer any form of poverty or social injustice. The fundamental criterion for the choice of recipients is always to attend to those who present a greater or more urgent need.
NMPE also promotes the virtues of fraternity and service, working for the harmony of relations among men and peoples, based on love and justice.
Relaunching the Global Education Pact (GEP)
The Global Education Pact is recognized as a “prophetic heritage” and one of the “guiding stars”. Although its seven paths (the person at the center, inclusion, the family, etc.) are still valid, the urgency of the present calls for a “relaunch” of the Pact.
To the original seven ways, Pope Leo XIV added three new priorities for the new generations:
- Interior life: Offering spaces for silence, discernment and dialogue with God.
- The digital human: Training in the wise use of technologies, placing the person before the algorithm.
- Disarmed and disarming peace: Making the commandment “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9) the method and content of learning.
NMPE also emphasizes the need for ongoing formation and continuous updating (cultural, pedagogical, theological), enabling students to critically evaluate and use the media.
The DNME and the GC XIX Determination meet: the same call to transform through education.
The vision outlined in the Apostolic Letter Designing New Maps of Hope (DNME) is intimately linked to Priority 4 for this sexennium expressed in Determination CGXIX of the Daughters of Jesus: “Apostolic presences that evangelize and transform”. Pope Leo XIV emphasizes that education is not an accessory activity, but the “very fabric of evangelization” and the concrete way in which the Gospel becomes an educational gesture, giving the foundation for our apostolic presences to be intentionally “spaces of evangelization.
By warning that the value of education is measured in terms of “dignity, justice and the capacity to serve the common good” and by recalling the duty to educate the poor and to unite “social justice and environmental justice”, the DNME urges our communities to be “agents of social transformation”.
Crucially, the Pope identifies the Global Education Pact (GEP) as the “pole star” and a “prophetic heritage” that must be relaunched with “quality and courage.” This relaunch is a direct response to the Determination that calls us to “continue to promote the Global Education Pact in our educational presences, thus responding to this initiative of the Church and to the needs of today with our educational mission”. Thus, in being called to “design new maps of hope” and to be “servants of the educational world, choreographers of hope”, the Letter reaffirms our commitment that in every presence “our own way of educating” be brought to life in order to build a “more just and fraternal future”.
The commitment to integral education, justice, peace and the centrality of the person – key themes of the DNME, the axis of our own way of educating and the source of inspiration for the deployment of Priority 4 of the GCXIX Determination – guarantee that our apostolic presences are, effectively, the response that the Church and the world need today for evangelization and social transformation.
