WITH POPE FRANCIS AT THE VATICAN

Vatican City

I was present yesterday at the Vatican when His Holiness, Pope Francis, closed the Fourth Annual Congress of Scholas Occurrentes—a project personally supported by the Pontiff and directed by José María del Corral and Enrique Palmeyro, the underlying mission of which is the achievement of world peace through education—with a worldwide call for “reconstruction of the educational pact.”

At the closing ceremony of the Scholas Congress,

I had the privilege of meeting Pope Francis and

presenting him with a copy of my book,

"El Crimen de la Guerra", soon to be published

in English as "War: A Crime Against Humanity".

Behind the Pope is Scholas Co-Director José

María del Corral.

The Pope posited that, for some time now, the educational pact that should exist between learning centers, students, nations, cultures and society as a whole “is broken...and badly broken, and it can’t be stuck back together.” He issued a challenge to all principal players throughout the world “to harmonize” so as to be able to change the course of education and of children “who are the future.”

On closing the conference—attended by educators, social leaders, renowned personalities who use their fame to back projects that aid underprivileged children, and other people linked to peace education—Pope Francis said that his great concern was that of “achieving harmonies.”

“Not simply achieving compromises, achieving deals, achieving partial understandings,” he added. “Harmony is, in a sense, creating an understanding of differences, accepting differences, valuing differences,” he continued. “We’re not going to change the world if we don’t change education.”

He rendered tribute to teachers, warning that all other institutions in society had “delegated education to the agents of education, to the teachers...generally poorly paid teachers,” who had been forced to bear all of the responsibility of educating the world’s children.

Regarding the fundamental mission of Scholas Occurrentes, the Pontiff said: “Scholas wants to reintegrate, somehow, the efforts of everyone in pro of education. I want to rebuild, harmoniously, the educational pact.”

The Pope added that it was “for this reason that Scholas seeks bridges: culture, sports, science...Moreover, Scholas seeks to harmonize education in the person of children themselves.” He added that, toward this end, “Scholas wants to harmonize the language of the head with the language of the heart, and the language of the hands, so that (children) think what they feel and feel what they do.”

He called on each nation in the world to reencounter “the foundational things of the nation, that which make sense of that nation,” and to draw from those things, “the kind of universality that harmonizes...foundational health, a ludic capacity, the creative capacity of play.”

Pope Francis: "achieving harmonies"

The Pontiff kicked off the closing ceremony of the Scholas Occurrentes Congress by participating in a video-conference with children suffering from different mental and physical challenges, who explained how technology had aided them in improving their quality of life. Following his dialogue with the children, the Pope transmitted a personal message to them: “Each of you has...a box with a treasure inside. Your job is to open the box, take the treasure out, make it grow, and give that treasure to others, and receive the treasures that the others share with you. Each one of us has a treasure inside. If we keep it locked up, it just stays there closed up. If we share it with others, the treasure multiplies with the treasures that come from others.”

Pope Francis concluded his closing presentation by expressing his wish “that this spark that has been born might spread, in a fire that will help reconstruct (and) harmonize the educational pact. The winners in this are the kids, and I thank you all for what you are doing for the future, because saying kids is the same as saying future.

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME—INTRODUCTION TO A CONTROVERSY WHOSE DAY IS COMING

For some time now, the warning signs have been clear to anyone studying the evolution of free-market economies worldwide. Job creation is not keeping pace with job attrition and demographic expansion. The tendency is toward a world with ever more people and ever fewer jobs. While most politicians and world leaders praise the technological revolution that has served up extraordinary advances to billions the world over, the dwindling sources of legitimate employment belie optimism for the average individual’s future work possibilities. Among possible solutions, one of the most salient is the controversial idea of some sort of basic “allowance” to ensure coverage of people’s personal needs. But this is an idea that is still in its infancy, while its practical application may be more urgently required than is generally presumed. In Western capitalist society there has long been a conservative idea that the capitalist makes money through investment and that the worker makes a living wi...

THE RISE OF POPULIST NATIONALISM: PART III — ROOT CAUSES

To read Parts I and II, please visit the following links: http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html In a recently released documentary video written and directed by Kelly Nyks, Peter D. Hutchinson and Jared P. Scott for PF Films ( http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/ ) , the internationally esteemed dean of US intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, provides, like no one else to date, a clear, concise analysis of how the much-touted American dream has become an American nightmare for all but a privileged elite. And as goes the United States, so too goes the world, often with devastatingly multiplied effect. The failure of the majority of the public to understand the causes behind this dream’s demise and, worse still, their lack of tools for dealing with it, are at the root of the fears and frustrations currently fueling populist nationa...

THE RISE OF POPULIST NATIONALISM: AUTHORITARIANISM 101

Hitler said what beleaguered Germans wanted to hear. Ever since World War II, people in the Western world have been asking rhetorically how a nation of the education and cultural excellence of Germany could have believed in and rallied around such a sinister, bigoted, megalomaniacal and xenophobic leader as Adolf Hitler. Perhaps there is no single, clear-cut response to that question. But part of the answer is that such an autocratic, über -nationalist leader, whose stilted them-and-us world vision led to the most tragic global conflict in the history of the human race, was a product of his era, a supremely-driven opportunist who saw clearly how to take advantage of the widespread sense of discontent, disenfranchisement, humiliation and despair bred in his nation as of the end of World War I, in order to build a witheringly powerful and highly militarized movement “to make Germany great again.” Hitler’s so-called Nazi movement evolved by challenging the democratic syste...

Versión en español:

Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

Search This Blog