‘Our destination is heaven:’ Pope Francis speaks about death

Vatican City, Feb 20, 2020 / 10:08 am (CNA).- Pope Francis called for an educational revolution Thursday, telling the Congregation for Catholic Education that more effort needs to be made to accelerate the inclusiveness of education.

Ecology and fraternity are an integral part of education, Pope Francis told the Catholic education leaders ahead of the pope’s Global Compact on Education taking place May 14.

“The educational pact must not be a simple order, it must not be a rehash of the positivisms we have received from an Enlightenment education. It must be revolutionary,” Pope Francis said Feb. 20.

The pope said that the purpose of an “education that focuses on the person in his integral reality” is “above all” oriented “to the discovery of fraternity that produces the multicultural composition of humanity.”

Pope Francis called for educators capable of resetting their teaching methods to form young people in an “ecological ethic.” He said education is a “dynamic reality,” which is “never a repetitive action.”

“Education is called with its pacifying force to form people capable of understanding that diversity does not hinder unity, rather they are indispensable for the richness of one’s own identity and that of everyone,” Francis said.

“As for the method, education is an inclusive movement. An inclusion that goes towards all the excluded: those for poverty, for vulnerability due to wars, famines and natural disasters, for social selectivity, for family and existential difficulties,” he said.

Educational intiativies for migrants and refugees should be put into action “without any distinction of sex, religion, or ethnicity,” the pope told the congregation.

Pope Francis said a “peace-making educational movement” is needed in light of the fractures between cultures masking a “fear of diversity and difference.”

“Inclusion is not a modern invention, but is an integral part of the Christian salvific message,” Pope Francis said.

The pope addressed the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Catholic Education. The congregation oversees 216,000 Catholic schools attended by over 60 million pupils, and 1,750 Catholic universities with over 11 million students.

The congregation devotes particular attention to institutions of Catholic higher education, which exist “by their nature aim to secure that the Christian outlook should acquire a public, stable and universal influence in the whole process of the promotion of higher culture,” according to St. John Paul II’s 1979 apostolic constitution on ecclesiastical universities and faculties, Sapientia Christiana.

Ex corde Ecclesiae, St. John Paul II’s 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, states that “A Catholic university’s privileged task is to unite existentially by intellectual effort two orders of reality that too frequently tend to be placed in opposition as though they were antithetical: the search for truth, and the certainty of already knowing the fount of truth.”

“Every human reality, both individual and social has been liberated by Christ: persons, as well as the activities of men and women, of which culture is the highest and incarnate expression…. Jesus Christ, our Saviour, offers his light and his hope to all those who promote the sciences, the arts, letters and the numerous fields developed by modern culture,” it states. “Therefore, all the sons and daughters of the Church should become aware of their mission and discover how the strength of the Gospel can penetrate and regenerate the mentalities and dominant values that inspire individual cultures, as well as the opinions and mental attitudes that are derived from it.”

Pope Francis has tasked the Congregation for Catholic Education with organizing his Global Educational Summit.

When the educational pact was first announced in September, “the most significant personalities of the political, cultural and religious world” were invited to attend.

The foundation of the pact is “openness to others,” according to the instrumentum laboris for the education summit.

The aim of the Global Education Pact is to “renew the passion for a more open and inclusive education, capable of patient listening, constructive dialogue, and mutual understanding,” Pope Francis told the congregation.

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Vatican City, Feb 7, 2021 / 06:14 am (CNA).- Pope Francis prayed Sunday for justice and national stability in Burma as tens of thousands protest the Feb. 1 military coup.

“These days I am following with great concern the developments of the situ… […]

House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks with EWTN News’ Erik Rosales at the U.S. Capitol. / Credit: EWTN News

CNA Staff, Jan 22, 2024 / 19:00 pm (CNA).

House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke with EWTN News on the eve of the March for Life about his belief “in the sanctity of every human life at all stages” and shared a bit about his personal history.

“I’m the product of an unplanned pregnancy. My parents were teenagers when I was born, exactly one year before Roe v. Wade in 1972, in January,” Johnson told Capitol Hill correspondent Erik Rosales in an interview that aired Monday on “EWTN News Nightly.”

“Often we talk about the unborn, which is certainly important because we believe life has value from the moment of conception because it’s our Creator that gives us that and gives us our value,” Johnson said. “But it’s all the way through every stage of life.”

“This is an important thing to support young mothers who are in times of crisis in unplanned situations, to support families, to support them all the way through the pregnancy,” he said. 

“And then after, we need to be promoting adoption, cutting red tape that hinders the foster children system. So there’s a lot of work to do to build a culture of life.”

Johnson said Congress also has a role to play in protecting the pro-life community from attacks. In the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many pregnancy resource centers were victimized by arson attacks and acts of vandalism. 

“We have to, again, bring accountability,” he said. “We have a very important responsibility here in Congress to ensure that the rule of law is maintained, to ensure that the inherent and fundamental freedoms of all people are respected.”

The speaker pointed out that religious freedom is “literally the first freedom listed in the Bill of Rights,” which he said was “not by accident.”

“The founders understood that was essential not only to who we are as Americans but to who we are as human beings,” he told Rosales. 

“And so Congress has a role to advance that, to maintain those founding principles and to defend them at all costs.”

The weaponization of the U.S. government

Johnson also told EWTN that Congress needs to hold government institutions accountable for incidents like last year’s controversial federal investigation into traditionalist U.S. Catholics.

Rosales asked Johnson about last year’s revelations that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had circulated a memorandum that described an investigation into traditionalist Catholics for possible ties to domestic terrorist activities. 

The memorandum was the subject of hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. FBI Director Christopher Wray said in December that the bureau “[does] not and will not conduct investigations based on anybody’s exercise of their constitutionally protected religious [expression].” 

Johnson told Rosales that lawmakers describe the FBI as “weaponized” because “that’s exactly what it is.” Congress “[has] to bring accountability for agencies that have been spun out of control,” he said.

“It’s alarming,” Johnson said. “So we’ve called it out, we’ve drawn attention to it, and we’re demanding accountability for those who are in charge to ensure that those abuses of our agencies don’t happen again.”

“Ultimately, what’s at stake here is the people’s belief in our institutions, their faith in our institutions of government,” Johnson continued. “And that faith is at an all-time low right now. That’s what the polling shows. And that’s a very dangerous thing.” 

“To keep a constitutional republic — a government of, by, and for the people — the people have to believe that their justice system is fair and that they’re not picking on or discriminating against people of faith. And we’ve got to make sure that that happens,” Johnson concluded.

“EWTN News Nightly” airs weekday evenings at 6 p.m. ET.

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