Pope encourages Christian Brothers to evangelize through education

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Teaching should be lived as ministry and mission, Pope Leo XIV told the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Brothers or the Christian Brothers.

He praised and encouraged them to continue to pay attention to teacher training “and the creation of educating communities where teaching is enriched by the contribution of everyone.”

In fact, “an aspect of the Lasallian reality that I consider important is teaching lived as ministry and mission, as consecration in the church,” he said during an audience at the Vatican May 15 with a group of Christian Brothers.

The Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded by St. John Baptist de La Salle in 1680, is a Catholic lay religious congregation of men devoted to education and teaching. The brothers were celebrating the 300th anniversary of their recognition by Pope Benedict XIII in 1725 and the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of St. de La Salle as the patron saint of educators by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

The order operates Calvert Hall College High School in Towson.

“After three centuries, it is wonderful to see how your presence continues to bear the freshness of a rich and vast educational entity, with which, in various parts of the world, you still devote yourselves to the formation of young people with enthusiasm, fidelity and a spirit of sacrifice,” Pope Leo said.

Their saint founder “loved to say, ”Your altar is the classroom,'” which created something new in the church: lay teachers and catechists who were “invested in the community with a genuine ‘ministry,’ following the principle of evangelizing by educating and educating by evangelizing.”

St. de La Salle introduced a new way of teaching and other innovations in order to confront the challenges at the time, he said. As problems arose, the saint sought “creative answers” and forged “new and often unexplored paths” instead of being discouraged.

Today, there are new obstacles to be faced, he said. “Think of the isolation caused by widespread relational models increasingly marked by superficiality, individualism and emotional instability; the spread of patterns of thinking weakened by relativism; and the prevalence of rhythms and lifestyles in which there is not enough room for listening, reflection and dialogue — at school, in the family, sometimes among peers themselves — with the resulting loneliness.”

Even though young people are “a volcano of life, energy, feelings and ideas,” he said, they also need help “in order for this great wealth to grow in harmony, and to overcome what, albeit in a different way to the past, can still hinder their healthy development.”

Some “useful questions” to ask, he said, are “What are the most urgent challenges to be faced today in the world of young people? What values need to be promoted? What resources can we rely on?”

Pope Leo encouraged them to be like their founder and turn today’s challenges into “springboards to explore new ways, develop tools and adopt new languages to continue to touch the hearts of students, helping and encouraging them to face every obstacle with courage so that they may give the best of themselves in life, according to God’s plans.”

“The charism of the school, which you embrace with your fourth vow of teaching,” he said, is “a service to society and a valuable work of charity” as well as “one of the most beautiful and eloquent expressions of that priestly, prophetic and kingly ‘munus’ (role) that we have all received in baptism.”

“I hope that vocations to Lasallian religious consecration may grow, that they may be encouraged and promoted, in your schools and beyond, and that, in synergy with all the other formative components, they may contribute to inspiring joyful and fruitful paths of holiness among the young people who attend them,” he said.