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(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis on Friday evening inaugurated the new Vatican office of the Scholas Occurrentes Foundation, which promotes an interface of education, art and sport to create a “culture of encounter for peace”.

For the occasion, Pope Francis connected with young members of the group from 9 countries via a live feed. Those joining the Holy Father included students from Italy, Colombia, Haiti, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Listen to Devin Watkins’ report:

Speaking to young people of the Scholas Occurrentes via a live video feed, Pope Francis warned against making education something only for the “elite”.

Elitism in education

“There is a great danger in the area of education for young people: that of elitism. Gradually, monetary support for education in some places is eroded and an elite is created which can afford to pay for education.”

The Pope said this attitude “excludes young boys and girls who have no education”.

Rather, he said, “Education is not about knowing things or taking lessons but about being able to use three lingos: those of the head, the heart, and the hands.”

He said this means "learning so that you can think about what you feel and do, can feel what you think and do, and can do what you feel and think. Unity within a person."

Globalization like a polyhedron

Turning to the theme of globalization, Pope Francis said it is a good thing but that there is the danger of understanding it as “a billiard ball: A sphere in which every point is equidistant from the center and personal characteristics of a boy or girl are cancelled out. Either you conform to the system or you don’t exist!”

He said true globalization is like a polyhedron with many facets, where “we strive for unity but each person maintains their uniqueness and richness”.

In conclusion, the Pope told the young people that they have it within themselves to discover their own path, especially through solidarity with others.

“A life that is not shared with others: Do you know what purpose it serves? For the museum! And I don’t think any of you wants to end up in a museum!”

Scholas Occurrentes Foundation

Founded by Pope Francis on 13 August 2013, the Scholas Occurrentes Foundation is an international organization of Pontifical right whose primary objective is the promotion of a “culture of encounter for peace through education, technology, art, and sport”.

The new office inaugurated by the Pope on Friday evening is housed at the St. Callixtus Palace and will serve as the Foundation’s base for operations in Italy.

It is present in 190 countries with a network of nearly half a million schools of all religious confessions, as well as both public and private lay schools.

The movement got its start 20 years ago in Argentina when Jorge Mario Bergoglio – now Pope Francis – was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

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Krakow, Poland, Jun 9, 2017 / 11:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The pastoral care of families was one of the key areas of discussion for Poland's bishops in their latest plenary assembly, which focused on continuity between the teaching of St. John Paul II and Pope Francis.

“The bishops understand that the Church thinks in a linear way; it's not a change of teaching, but it is in one line,” Fr. Pawel Rytel-Andrianik, spokesman for the Polish bishops' conference, told CNA June 9.

“In Familiaris consortio and Amoris laetitia you have one line in terms of teaching on the family,” he said, noting that a large chuck of the first day of their June 6-7 plenary focused on the progress of guidelines for the application of Amoris laetitia regarding the pastoral care of families in general, as well as couples in irregular unions.

According to the official communique issued after the plenary assembly, the main idea guiding discussion of the issue was “that Familiaris consortio and Amoris laetitia are in the same line, with this linear understanding of these documents” in terms of Church teaching.

The Polish bishops, who typically meet three times a year in plenary assemblies, held their latest gathering in Zakopane, nearly 70 miles south of Krakow, to mark the 20th anniversary of St. John Paul II's visit to the town.

Falling within the 100th anniversary of the Fatima Marian apparitions, the plenary was also meant to honor the centenary.

On the first day of the plenary the bishops renewed the Act of Consecration of the Church in Poland to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which was originally made Sept. 8, 1946, by Cardinal August Hlond of Warsaw and Gniezno at the Jasna Gora shrine in Cz?stochowa.

The renewal of the consecration, especially in the centenary year of the Fatima apparitions, Fr. Rytel-Andrianik said, is  “very, very important for the life of the Church in Poland.” In fact, “more than 70 percent of all parishes in Poland have a special devotion to Our Lady of Fatima.”

Pope Francis' 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, on love in the family, was also a focus of discussion at the bishops' assembly. The document has been the subject of varied reception and interpretation, particularly regarding the pastoral care of divorced-and-remarried persons.

The sticking point is whether Amoris laetitia's eighth chapter, on accompanying, discerning and integrating weakness, has opened the door for divorced persons who have remarried, and without taking on the duty to live in complete continence, to receive reconciliation and Communion.

Some, like Robert Spaemann and the four cardinals who submitted dubia to Pope Francis regarding the exhortation, have maintained Amoris laetitia is incompatible with Church teaching; and others, like Cardinal Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that it has not changed the Church's discipline or teaching.

Still others, like Norbert Lüdecke and the Maltese episcopal conference, read ambiguities in Amoris laetitia as opening the way to a new pastoral practice; or even (e.g., Rocco Buttiglione, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna) as a progression in continuity with the teaching of St. John Paul II.

As for the Polish bishops, Fr. Rytel-Andrianik said they agreed that what Pope Francis wrote in Amoris laetitia is “the same teaching as Familiaris consortio.”

The bishops, he said, constantly call for “a new approach to these people to try to include them into the life of the Church, in the light of Amoris laetitia and in the light of Familiaris consortio 84.”

In paragraph 84 of Familiaris consortio, St. John Paul II said that the increase in the number of divorced couples who have entered into new unions is a problem which “must be faced with resolution and without delay.”

“I earnestly call upon pastors and the whole community of the faithful to help the divorced, and with solicitous care to make sure that they do not consider themselves as separated from the Church, for as baptized persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life,” he said.

Going on, St. John Paul II said these couples “should be encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts in favor of justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God's grace. Let the Church pray for them, encourage them and show herself a merciful mother, and thus sustain them in faith and hope.”

Pope Francis expressed much of the same sentiments in Amoris laetitia, particularly on the need to welcome these couples and encourage their participation in parish life, so that they don't feel stigmatized or ostracized.

Fr. Rytel-Andrianik said “the bishops appreciate, very much, Amoris laetitia,” and see it as “a treasure of the Church that builds on Familiaris consortio.”

Although the Polish bishops have yet to publish official guidelines for the application of Amoris laetitia, as some other bishops' conferences have, Fr. Rytel-Andrianik said the guidelines are in the final phases of revision, and should come out sometime in autumn.

In addition to the application of Amoris laetitia, other key issues discussed during the plenary were the new pastoral program for the Church in Poland for the coming year, liturgical questions, and cooperation with the state when it comes to protection of minors.

Specifically, discussion on abuse prevention focused on adjusting ecclesial law to match an amendment to the state's penal code that will go into effect in July, introducing a strict legal obligation to report immediately incidents of sex abuse or consensual sex with a minor to the appropriate authorities.

In terms of the new pastoral program for 2017-2018, the year will be dedicated to the Holy Spirit and the sacrament of Confirmation, according to the Polish bishops' official website.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Cindy Black

By Carol Zimmermann

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Cindy Black's copy of "Evangelii Gaudium" -- Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation on the church's mission to evangelize the modern world -- is worn from use, marked up and with notes in it.

Black, executive director of Redeemer Radio, a Catholic radio station based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, said she is inspired overall by the 2013 text, which she considers a guide, but one sentence particularly stops her in her tracks.

The line, from paragraph 49 reads: "If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life."

That quote, for her, sums up why Catholics need to share their faith and it has been her own motivation in recent years. She also takes to heart a message Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, said years ago in a homily about the parable of the lost sheep. He suggested viewing the parable differently when thinking about the modern church -- not that a shepherd leaves his flock of 99 sheep to find the one that is lost but that 99 sheep are lost and one remains.

"The danger for us is to spend all our time nourishing this one remaining sheep and not to have time -- also because of the scarcity of clergy -- to seek out those who are lost. The contribution of the laity in this situation seems providential," he said in his Advent homily.

Black said she tells "anyone who will listen" that story, emphasizing that Catholics need to find some way to reach out beyond those already in the church which requires re-thinking the way things are usually done.

Unpacking more of what the pope is saying in "Evangelii Gaudium" or "Joy of the Gospel" and gaining a deeper understanding of how Catholics can effectively evangelize in the modern word is something Black hopes to gain during the "Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel in America" in Orlando, Florida, July 1-4.

The Fort Wayne native and mother of two is attending the convocation, sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, with a delegation from the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. In a June 5 interview with Catholic News Service, she said she hopes delegates are "open to the Holy Spirit" and willing to be reinvigorated in their mission.

She has been to enough conferences over the years in her work at the Indiana diocese in adult faith formation, youth ministry and evangelization offices to wonder: "How many times can we strengthen the same people over and over?"

She hopes the convocation will not be so much about making the 3,000 delegates stronger in their faith but equipping them to go back and enliven their parishes and ministries and reach out to those no longer in the church, especially young adults.

At Redeemer Radio, where she has worked for a year and a half, in her work in diocesan ministries for about a decade and anecdotally among friends and parishioners, Black often has had people ask her for prayers for their grown sons or daughters who no longer go to church.

This is not an isolated trend either. She points out that the church has an 85 percent attrition rate for young adults, adding that it is no different for people who attended Catholic schools, went on missions, or not. As she sees it, the church needs to really face this fact and listen to these young people to find out what prompted them to walk away. To reverse this trend, she said, church leaders are going to have to make changes, take risks and try new things.

That's what Pope Francis is calling us to, she said, to go out not with the idea that "we have the truth in the upper hand" but to recognize where others are in their faith journey and to get them to a deeper relationship with Jesus.

When she applied for the job at the Catholic radio station, she was already accustomed to reaching out beyond the parish walls. She said in her interview: "If your goal is to pat the one (sheep) on the back, I'm not your person."

Instead, she hoped to challenge the listener, those on the peripheries that just happen to tune in, which is something she hopes will only be further reinforced at the convocation.

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Follow Zimmermann on Twitter: @carolmaczim.

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