Argentina: Consudec celebrates 100 years at the service of Catholic education

The Higher Council of Catholic Education, an episcopal body that brings together the confessional educational institutions of Argentina, celebrates 100 years. In dialogue with ACI Press, its president, Adrián Álvarez, evaluated the traveled road and commented on the challenges of Catholic education at this time.

In line with the Jubileo de la Esperanza, this year of the centenary, Consudec travels its centenary year making some gestures to reveal its rich history throughout this century.

The first one will be this Friday, with a thanksgiving mass that will be held at 5:00 p.m. in the Basilica Nuestra Señora del Socorro, of the City of Buenos Aires, and with which the annual assembly will conclude.

The celebration will be the opportunity to distinguish previous members of the Higher Council of Catholic Education and give thanks for the life and generous service of all.

A space of unity, debate and construction

At the head of the organism since 2022, Adrián Álvarez admits that it is “an undeserved honor” and a “challenging” task to assume again in the Centenary of Consudec.

“The rich trajectory of the considec with its lights and its shadows, has a highly positive balance. The presence of the church’s voice not only in defense of the country’s Catholic education, but thinking about Argentine education as a whole and being present in each space of proposals to contribute its experience and its gaze on the different topics has always been the badge,” he says.

In that sense, it values ​​“the active participation of the different provincial councils and the education boards that in a daily basis face the new challenges of education”, a fact that evidences the life of the Consudec and demonstrates that after 100 years, “far from being obsolete, it remains an essential space of unity and debate and construction of proposals”.

In recent years, the institution has been characterized by assuming the task of responding to Pope Francis for a global educational pact, called that worked as a “engine of many initiatives.”

“In particular, we have generated a space for the training of leaders to carry out these challenges through an executive training program with the Department of Education of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Argentine Catholic University, which has already concluded its first cohort and we are promptly initiating the second,” he said.

Specific meetings and training spaces have also been generated where the educational pact was deepened.

However, the main initiative, arising from the Episcopal Education Commission, and jointly with the Federation of Religious Educational Associations of Argentina (FAERA), was to implement the Argentine Educational Pact, which consists of dialogue tables in different parts of the country, where “we have heard the voices of students, families, teachers, managers, trade unionists, academics and officials about the challenges that Argentina has Álvarez.

The work done federally allowed “to prepare a first working document in which we summarize the first agreements to which it has been reached, and that we hope to be able to deepen and concretize in educational policy measures,” said the president of Consudec.

The challenge of sowing hope

Regarding the challenges facing Catholic education today, Álvarez acknowledged that the main challenge is to “sow hope in this world, hope based on Jesus, and that we share with those who add to our educational communities – Chicicos and girls, young people, families, teachers and not teachers – making present the values ​​of the Gospel and infecting the joy of being loved by a father who accompanies us in our life.

Taking into account the teaching reality, he admitted that today the educators “are challenged by a world that progresses rapidly, incorporating technology, often without any ethical assessment, and that it seems to take confrontation as a relationship model.”

“In that context, to which the difficult socioeconomic situation is added many times, our teachers – which are part of those same conditions – again sow seeds of hope and values ​​every day such as coexistence, dialogue, tolerance, solidarity, respect,” he said.

In recent years, with pandemic, “teachers had to face not only the implementation of virtuality, but also to the necessary containment of children and young people in the face of uncertainty and isolation.” Then, “with the return to face -to -face, new situations referred to the links had to accompany,” he said.

“Just as in the first instance it was the health agents who went out to face the pandemic, it was the teachers who put on his shoulder the containment of children, youth and their families,” said Álvarez.

Educate is an act of hope

In this 2025, the year of the centenary and the jubilee of hope, “as Pope Francis tells us ‘Educar is an act of hope’, hope in the better future in which each of us are main actors,” said the president of Consudec.

“The teacher is a sowing of Esperanza, artisan of humanity, builder of peace and the encounter, which handles the three languages: the language of the mind, that of the heart, that of the hands,” says the Pope and repeats the leader with conviction.

Finally, and following the teachings of the Holy Father in Christus Vivit, Álvarez recalled that “talking about young people means talking about promises, and means talking about joy. Young people have so much strength, they are able to look with such hope. A young man is a promise of life that has incorporated a certain degree of tenacity; he has enough madness to be able to self -deceive and sufficient ability to be able to heal the disappointment that can derive from it.”

Within that framework, “we are responsible as adults to accompany the hope of these young people so that it is not stolen, but to bear abundant fruits,” he concluded.