• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Effie Caldarola
          • John Garvey
          • Father Ed Dougherty, M.M.
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • Magazine Subscriptions
        • Archdiocesan Directory
  • CR Radio
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe
Pope Francis greets a woman during an audience with participants attending a conference promoting educational initiatives for migrants and refugees, at the Vatican Sept. 29, 2022. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Helping each student shine is a spiritual work of mercy, pope says

September 30, 2022
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Filed Under: Feature, News, Vatican, World News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Education is a spiritual work of mercy not because it imparts information, but because it helps another find meaning and learn to shine, Pope Francis told members of a Catholic group from Argentina.

When done with respect, “education offers a meaning, a narrative to every element of human life,” and it “helps to bring out the best in each person, to polish the diamond that the Lord has placed in each one,” Pope Francis said Sept. 30 in a written message to members of the Fraternity of St. Thomas Aquinas Groups.

Father César Garcés, president of the Fraternity of St. Thomas Aquinas Groups, greets Pope Francis during an audience with members of the Catholic group from Argentina in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall Sept. 30, 2022. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Founded in the 1960s in Argentina, the groups are committed to strengthening Christian values in society and in different cultures, mainly through the educational work of their members and, more recently, through the schools and universities they sponsor or staff.

Meeting members at the Vatican, Pope Francis distributed, but did not read his prepared text.

Christian education, the pope wrote, “helps this diamond to let the light, which is Christ, pass through it, so that in this way it can become a source of light and shine in the world.”

“The Lord makes us sharers in his light, in his very nature, and therefore each of his disciples illuminates the world, driving away the darkness and transforming reality,” he wrote.

Meeting the group less than two weeks before the Catholic Church will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis wrote that the council highlighted “the rights and duties of the laity for the evangelizing mission that they, too, possess, since they are sons and daughters of God through baptism.”

“The lay faithful have the important responsibility of bringing the light of the Gospel to the temporal realities of the world in communion with the pastors of the church and motivated by Christian charity,” the pope wrote. One way of doing that is through education and by engaging in a dialogue with culture.

Pope Francis encouraged members of the fraternity to look to the example of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was not afraid to engage with the work of Aristotle, a pagan, but always grounded his intellectual activity in prayer, especially adoration of the Eucharist.

In St. Thomas’ day, the pope wrote, “some were reluctant” to study Aristotle “because they feared that his pagan thought was in opposition to the Christian faith. However, St. Thomas discovered that much of Aristotle’s works were in harmony with Christian revelation” and that “there is a natural harmony between faith and reason.”

Recognizing that harmony, he said, “is essential for overcoming fundamentalism, fanaticism and ideology,” and it opens a broad pathway “for bringing the message of the Good News to different cultures, always with proposals that are compatible with human intelligence and respectful of the identity of each people.”

Read More Vatican News

New cardinals have great hopes for synod on synodality

New cardinals say building church unity is urgent need

New cardinals bring experience of ‘peripheries’ to universal church

Hope must be restored in communities, young people, pope says

Vatican at U.N.: Risk of nuclear war is ‘at its highest in generations’

Pope condemns child pornography: ‘Criminality available to everyone’

Copyright © 2022 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Print Print

Primary Sidebar

Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service is a leading agency for religious news. Its mission is to report fully, fairly and freely on the involvement of the church in the world today.

View all posts from this author

For the latest news delivered twice a week via email or text message, sign up to receive our free enewsletter.

| MOST POPULAR |

  • Baltimore’s beloved Brooks Robinson, Catholic convert, dies at 86
  • Archbishop Lori will ordain 14 permanent deacons Sept. 30
  • Frank Bramble, 75, put his business skills to charitable use throughout archdiocese
  • ‘The most equitable path for all victim-survivors’ – Archdiocese of Baltimore files for Chapter 11 reorganization
  • Fire in packed hall turns wedding joy into tragedy in northern Iraq, killing more than 100

| Latest Local News |

‘The most equitable path for all victim-survivors’ – Archdiocese of Baltimore files for Chapter 11 reorganization

Mount Calvary parishioners combines music, farming and family

New chief advancement officer for Archdiocese of Baltimore sees role as support for ministry

| Latest World News |

‘Not soldiers but knights’: Catholic mother mourns son and ‘brilliant’ generation slain in Ukraine

Aliens, demons or PSYOPS? Catholics study, debate UFO allegations

New cardinals have great hopes for synod on synodality

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • Aliens, demons or PSYOPS? Catholics study, debate UFO allegations
  • ‘Not soldiers but knights’: Catholic mother mourns son and ‘brilliant’ generation slain in Ukraine
  • New cardinals have great hopes for synod on synodality
  • Sen. Dianne Feinstein, remembered for ‘extraordinary’ legacy and Barrett controversy, dies at 90
  • ‘The most equitable path for all victim-survivors’ – Archdiocese of Baltimore files for Chapter 11 reorganization
  • New cardinals say building church unity is urgent need
  • New cardinals bring experience of ‘peripheries’ to universal church
  • Movie Review: ‘Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie’
  • Cupich: Embracing ‘integral ethic of solidarity’ key to living the Gospel in polarized times

Search

Membership

Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2023 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED