"Schools have reopened their gates" and "recent episodes of violence raise profound questions for us." So says the president of the CEI, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, who identifies the first of the "no longer deferrable challenges" as "that of educational inequalities: we cannot accept that place of birth, economic status, physical condition or social context determine a young person's learning opportunities. A genuinely inclusive school is one of the most powerful instruments of justice and peace." At the start of the school year, he adds, "we wish our schools to be places where no one feels excluded."
"The second challenge is pedagogical," continued the head of the Italian bishops, opening the proceedings of the Permanent Council, "and also concerns technological change. Artificial intelligence can offer valuable resources, but it does not replace the work of education. Schools do not compete with machines in providing quick answers, but teach how to ask the questions that make life human. No algorithm can take the place of a teacher's gaze that encourages, corrects, understands and accompanies. That gaze — of teachers — deserves great recognition."
"The third challenge," he continued, "is perhaps the most profound: preserving the capacity to think. In a world saturated with stimuli, information and connections, we need places where people can learn to pause, to delve deeper, to distinguish the true from the false, the essential from the superficial. Young people need adults who bear witness to the fact that true knowledge is not an accumulation of data, but wisdom for life. At the start of the school year, we do not wish only good results. We wish our schools to be communities capable of generating trust, passion and responsibility; places where no one feels excluded; laboratories of humanity in which technology serves the person and not the person technology. We wish them to preserve the unhurried time of listening, study, wonder and genuine dialogue, without which no inner freedom can grow. School is not a space to be crossed in haste: it is, even today, a decisive construction site for our shared future."
Zuppi: 'On end of life, a parliamentary debate free from lowest-common-denominator games'
"We are following the debate on end of life with concern," said the CEI president, "as regional initiatives multiply on a matter that concerns the dignity of every person and therefore the entire country. We hope for a broad, responsible parliamentary discussion, attentive to the needs of citizens and free from exploitation and hypocrisy regarding what is happening in the regions. We hope there will be no polarisation nor a race to the bottom, but that the dignity of the person will be upheld — dignity that does not diminish with illness or frailty."
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