Being on sabbatical at the Pontifical Biblical Institute this semester, I was invited to attend a special audience Pope Francis held on April 10th for all the Faculty, Students, Staff, Graduates and Families associated with the Gregorian Consortium in Rome. These educational institutions received their mission precisely from the Holy See in 1928 and they were entrusted to the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits. Some 5,000 were present in the Aula Paolo VI.  This gathering was extra special because for the first time in their history the Pope addresses his special educational missions in Rome as a Jesuit himself. And so you could expect an interesting Jesuit twist on things said.  

I was particularly struck by three values Pope Francis championed for the international schools because of the way they also can relate to our political and social situation in Canada.  

1) Appreciate the culture you come from so as to enrich the centre and your own culture in turn. Here Pope Francis stressed the inherent value of the multiculturalism of the Roman Schools. And he talked about the mutual enrichment that comes from the movement away from the peripheries to the centre and back to the peripheries. Implied in the “peripheries” were not only the cultural strengths of our rootedness in time and space but also the contexts of poverty, violence and injustice. In this movement, periphery-centre-periphery, we share our strengths even as we seek with others solutions to injustice.  

2) In all your interactions keep your mind open and not closed in on itself.  A life of study without a spiritual dimension fostered by the Gospels and the Ecclesial community easily falters into sterility and narcissism. Pope Francis had some harsh words against an ideological closedness that champions itself rather than the needs of others. A healthy mind is forever on the move, never finished and complete, always open to seeking the truth.

3) Always do your theology and your thinking “on your knees” in prayer. Far from simply bringing a dimension of asceticism to study, Pope Francis talked about the quality of “prayer” in all our efforts to understand as fostering a love of “goodness and beauty” in a community of faith.

As you can imagine, I could not help but think about our own concerns in Canada with our constant debates on multiculturalism and pluralism, immigration, first nations, language, secularism, energy development, health and education. Being reminded about some basic human and spiritual values in our complex debates is refreshing.