Pope Leo Calls Schools to Be Homes, Not Rankings
Addressing 1,200 educators from 60 countries, he warned against a ruthless culture of comparison that wounds young people seeking belonging.
On October 22, in the Paul VI Audience Hall, Pope Leo XIV addressed participants in an international congress on the pastoral care of schools and universities, organized by the Vatican office for Culture and Education. Some 1,200 educators and pastoral workers from 60 countries heard the Holy Father urge Catholic institutions to answer the hidden sufferings of the young with the Gospel, not with the logic of performance.
The Pope described how many students today feel anonymous. Among the hardships he named were “digital loneliness,” wounded families, a sense of inadequacy, and fear of an uncertain future. He warned that a “performance-driven culture that constantly compares and ranks people, sometimes ruthlessly,” together with a “misguided meritocracy,” fails to respect the dignity of the human person.
First a Home, Then a School
Against that climate, Catholic educational communities must be “first and foremost a home,” the Pope said — places where every student is known, welcomed, and valued. Only in that atmosphere of genuine belonging can young people encounter Christ and discover the fruitful synergy of faith and reason that has long marked the Church’s educational mission.
Formation, he insisted, cannot be reduced to credentials or rankings. It must restore the person at the center, so that each young man or woman experiences being seen and loved before being measured. That priority does not diminish academic excellence; it grounds excellence in the truth about the human person created in the image of God.
Protagonists of Fraternity
Pope Leo XIV called educators to help the young become “protagonists of a new way of inhabiting the world, builders of fraternity and of a more just society.” He pointed to Christ’s trust in the Apostles as the model: the Lord did not wait for the perfect, but entrusted ordinary men with an extraordinary mission, forming them through companionship and patience.
In the same spirit, Catholic schools and universities are summoned to accompany students through their existential trials, not merely to process them through curricula. The congress gathered those charged with pastoral care at every level of Catholic education, underscoring Rome’s insistence that the Church’s schools remain places of encounter with the living Christ amid the pressures of a culture that isolates and ranks.
The Holy Father’s words place a clear charge on Catholic educators: resist the reduction of persons to scores, open doors of belonging, and form young disciples capable of rebuilding fraternity in a fractured world.