Francis considers schools as being free of geographical boundaries and walls. He calls each school “a platform for drawing close to children and young people” (CV 221). Indeed, a school is not an end in itself; it is a platform, a support area that serves as a base for other operations. Schools are also “privileged places of personal development” (ibid.).
The school is not enclosed within boundaries and schedules; it goes beyond them. Addressed to the surrounding reality and to the world, it offers an educational program for the whole of life. Pope Francis recently reflected a broader vision of the school in his video message for the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Latin American Federation of Colleges of the Society of Jesus (FLACSI).
In it, he listed eight desires for schools of the Society of Jesus: 1) that Jesuit schools form hearts convinced of the mission for which they were created; 2) that they be welcoming schools, in which one can heal one’s own wounds and those of others; 3) that they be schools with doors that are really open, not only in words, where the poor can enter and where one can go out to meet the poor; 4) that they not retreat into a selfish elitism, but learn to live together with everyone, be places where fraternity is lived; 5) that they teach their pupils to discern, to read the signs of the times, to read their own lives as a gift to be grateful for and to share; 6) that they have a critical attitude toward the models of development, production and consumerism that are pushing inexorably towards inevitable harm; 7) that they have a conscience and foster conscious awareness ; 8) that they are schools of disciples and missionaries.
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© Union of Catholic Asian News
2023
