Vatican City - Last night, at the conclusion of the Jubilee Mass with university students, Pope Leo XIV signed an Apostolic Letter in St. Peter’s Basilica. Today, that Letter has been published. It is not a mere liturgical detail: it is a symbolic gesture linking this act to the memory of another text - Gravissimum educationis, October 28, 1965 - and accompanying the Jubilee with a simple and unsettling question: what does it mean to educate in an age that can connect almost everything, yet struggles to hold anyone together?
The title, Drawing New Maps of Hope, declares its method: not to change the Gospel, but to redraw the map. The Letter begins here: education is not an accessory activity; it is the living fabric through which the proclamationbecomes relationship, culture, and daily work in schools and universities. It is the “cosmology of Christian paideia” - a vision uniting faith and reason, thought and life, knowledge and justice. Not an identity manifesto, but a compass to navigate an environment that is complex, fragmented, digitalized.
An anniversary that challenges, not absolves
Sixty years later, Gravissimum educationis remains a compass: the right to education for all; the family as the first school of humanity; subsidiarity as a public architecture. And a warning: the human person cannot be reduced to a “competency profile” or an algorithm; professionalism demands ethics, and ethics requires practice. This is no rhetoric — it is the principle that prevents education from degenerating into mere training machinery. If the Council defined the rights and duties of parents and institutions, what kind of educational alliance are we building today? The Letter responds by reviving a concrete triad: the centrality of the person, co-responsibility with parents, and the formation of teachers — scientific, pedagogical, cultural, and spiritual. Technical updates are not enough: we need “a heart that listens” and a governance capable of quality and courage.
A genealogy that disproves nostalgia
The text avoids nostalgia. It retraces a living history: the Desert Fathers and Augustine, monasticism and medieval universities, the Ratio Studiorum, and the educational charisms born among the poor - Calasanzio, De La Salle, Champagnat, Don Bosco - together with the great female figures who opened paths for girls, migrants, and the marginalized. A pedagogy of flesh: without that labor, the Pope recalls, many masterpieces would never have reached us. Tradition, then, is not repetition, but responsible creativity.
Newman as co-patron: questions that cannot be silenced
A key line stands out: “no one educates alone.” The educating community is a we that prevents the stagnant waters of “it’s always been done this way.” In this we, relationship precedes curriculum, and doubt is not excluded but accompanied. It is no coincidence that the Pope proclaims Saint John Henry Newman co-patron of the educational mission alongside Thomas Aquinas: “Religious truth is not only a part but a condition of general knowledge.”Translated: a Catholic university is not a barracks of thought, but a place where cor ad cor loquitur — heart speaks to heart.
Constellations, not fiefdoms
The Catholic educational world appears as a constellation: parish schools and colleges, universities and higher institutes, vocational training centers, movements, digital platforms. Each star has its own light; together, they trace a route. This image expresses two truths: differences are not burdens (if well-coordinated), and unity is not uniformity. What is needed are real exchanges, recognition of best practices, missionary and academic cooperation. Less rivalry, more convergence. From this follows a political and pastoral appeal: guarantee access for the poor, support fragile families, promote scholarships, and practice quality governance. “To lose the poor is to lose the school itself.” It is a criterion of truth, not a slogan.
The friction of the digital and the question of AI
What does it mean to educate in the age of algorithms? The text replies without technophobia: technology must serve the person, enrich learning, not impoverish relationships and community. No algorithm will ever replace poetry, irony, imagination, or the joy of error that becomes growth. Therefore, artificial intelligence must be governed: through dignity, justice, labor, public ethics and participation, and theological and philosophical reflection of equal depth.
Catholic universities? Fewer podiums, more tables — spaces for shared dialogue. A perfect definition of the “diakonia of culture.”
The Educational Pact as a guiding star (and three priorities)
The Apostolic Letter of Leo XIV inherits the legacy of the Global Compact on Education — its seven “paths”: the person at the center; listening to the young; dignity and full participation of women; the family; inclusion; renewal of economy and politics; care for our common home — and, five years after its launch, calls not for management but renewal. It adds three priorities: Inner life (silence, discernment), Humane digital (the person before the algorithm, integration of intelligences), Disarmed peace (non-violent languages, bridges not walls). A grammar for crossing today’s crises of attention, wounded relationships, and growing inequalities.
A final question remains
If education is a “craft of promises” — of time, trust, competence, justice, mercy — then who promises what, to whom, and with whom? The Letter entrusts us with three verbs that sound like a civic examination of conscience: disarm words, lift the gaze, guard the heart. Disarm, because polemics do not educate; Lift, because horizon comes before urgency; Guard, because relationship precedes opinion. It is an appeal to pastors, teachers, parents, students, administrators — a blessing turned responsibility. Not a text “for insiders,” but a political act in the highest sense: to declare what vision of humanity and society we are learning to teach, and to ask whether we still have the courage to promise.
f.S.A.
Silere non possum