VATICAN (CNS): Pope Leo XIV will issue a document on Catholic education on October 28, marking the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on education, José Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education said on October 22.
Cardinal Mendonça told reporters that in the document Pope Leo will name St. John Henry Newman, who will be declared a doctor of the Church on November 1, co-patron, joining current patron, St. Thomas Aquinas.
Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça shared the news during a presentation about the Jubilee of the World of Education, which is scheduled for October 27-November 1. More than 20,000 people from 124 nations have signed up for the event celebrating the Catholic commitment to education from primary school through university, he said.
The cardinal said the Jubilee was planned to coincide with the anniversary of Gravissimum Educationis, the Vatican II Declaration on Christian Education.
Promulgated on 28 October 1965, the declaration affirmed the right of parents to choose the type of education they want for their children, upheld the importance of Catholic schools and defended freedom of inquiry in Catholic colleges and universities.
The cardinal said the document affirmed “the universal right to education” and marked “a change in language—that is, in mentality—in speaking about schools not so much in terms of ‘institutions’ but rather as ‘educational communities.'”
Pope Leo’s document marking the anniversary, he said, insists the value of the Vatican II declaration “is not frozen in time: it is a compass that continues to point the way.”
The cardinal said, quoting the new document, “Rapid and profound changes are exposing children, adolescents and young people to unprecedented vulnerabilities. It is not enough to preserve; we must relaunch.”
In the new document, the cardinal said, Pope Leo asks “all educational institutions to inaugurate a new season that speaks to the hearts of the new generations, reconnecting knowledge and meaning, competence and responsibility, faith and life.”
