Pope Francis asked a delegation of Catholic teachers and parents from Catholic schools to “never bully!”, because if they do, that is preparing children and young people “for war and not for peace.”
The Holy Father made this request this morning in the Vatican, upon receiving in audience to the Italian Association of Catholic Teachers, the Italian Catholic Union of Teachers, Leaders, Educators and Trainers; and the Catholic School Parents Association.
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Pope Francis highlighted the importance of the challenge of “imagining peace” in schools, “but if at school you wage cold war among yourselves, if at school you are bullies (bullies) with the girls and boys who have problems, “This is preparing for war and not for peace!”
“Please, never bully! Have you understood this? Never bully! Do we all say it together? Come on! Never bully! Courage and forward. “Work on this.”
The Holy Father then highlighted that this meeting takes place during Christmas time, in which “God’s pedagogy is shown. And what is your ‘educational method’? That of proximity, closeness. God is close, compassionate and tender.”
The Pope highlighted that “God’s is a pedagogy of gift, a call to live in communion with Him and with others, as part of a project of universal brotherhood, a project in which the family has a central and irreplaceable position. The family!”
Pope Francis shares an anecdote about what a family should not do
“A person told me that one Sunday he was having lunch in a restaurant and that at the next table there was a family: dad, mom, son and daughter. The four of them with the cell phone did not talk to each other,” said the Pontiff.
“This man heard something, came up and said: ‘but you are family, why don’t you talk to each other? It’s a strange thing.’ They listened to him, sent him away and continued with these things. Please, let’s talk as a family! “Family is dialogue, the dialogue that makes us grow.”
The Jubilee of Hope and Catholic education in school
Pope Francis then recalled the motto of the Jubilee of Hope that began on December 24: “Pilgrims of Hope” and highlighted that “a good teacher is a man or woman of hope, because he dedicates himself with confidence and patience to a human growth project”.
“Their hope is not naive, it is rooted in reality, sustained by the conviction that every educational effort has value and that every person has a dignity and a vocation that deserve to be cultivated,” he continued.
To maintain this hope, the Holy Father exhorted, it is necessary to “keep our gaze fixed on Jesus, teacher and companion on the journey: this allows us to truly be pilgrims of hope.”
“Let us not forget – Pope Francis stressed – that hope does not disappoint. Optimism disappoints, but hope does not disappoint. A hope that surpasses all human desire, because it opens minds and hearts to life and eternal beauty. The school needs this!”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.