Catholics are called to mission statement and the Pope has deepened this universal vocation through aspects such as Education, mercy and the witness of hope.

What are today's educational priorities? How can we transmit today, especially to young men and women, the meaning of life as "mission statement"?

As the next Jubilee approaches, in 2025, the Pope has referred these weeks to the great themes of the evangelizing mission statement : faith and its transmission, mercy as the principal manifestation of charity, hope as the force that sustains us on our journey.

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On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of seminar archbishop of Naples, the Pope had a meeting with the authorities and seminarians. At purpose of the training, Francis observed, the Church is like "a work in continuous construction". 

"And this is also what he asks of you: to be servants-this means ministers-who know how to adopt a style of pastoral discernment in all status, knowing that all of us, priests and laity, are on the way to fullness and are workers in a work under construction. Wecannot offer monolithic and ready-made answers to today's complex reality, but we must invest our energies in the advertisement of what is essential, which is the mercy of God, manifesting it through closeness, paternity, gentleness, perfecting the art of discernment".

He stressed the need for a priestly training that is rooted in commitment, passion and creativity, together with charity, spiritual life and fraternity.

On a more general level, that of the Catholic-inspired Education , the Pope wrote a message for the congress promoted by the Spanish bishops and closed in Spain during the month of February, with the degree scroll "The Church in the Education. Presence and commitment" (cfr. Message of 20-II-2024). The previous congress of similar characteristics had been celebrated one hundred years earlier.

Francis writes: "The educational mission statement of the Church remains throughout the centuries. Then and now we are driven by the same great hope that springs from the Gospel, with which we look at everyone, beginning with the smallest and most vulnerable". He adds that Education is above all "an act of hope" for people, the horizons of their lives, their possibilities of change and of contributing to the renewal of society. 

"Today -the Popecontinues- the educational mission statement has a particular urgency, which is why I have insisted on a global educational pact (cf. Francis, Message launching the global educational Pact, 2019 and Document of work, 2020), whose priority is to know how to put the personat the center". 

He goes on to evoke some fundamental principles for a Catholic-inspired Education .

First of all, the right to Education, since no one should be excluded, considering that there are still so many children and young people without access to Education in so many places in the world, suffering from oppression, war and violence.

For this reason, Francis exhorts the congress participants (on the final day there were about 1200 educators from all over the country, gathered in Madrid), to work first and foremost for the needs of Spain, but without forgetting anyone.

"Be sensitive to the new exclusions generated by the throwaway culture. And never lose sight of the fact that the generation of relationships of justice among peoples, the capacity for solidarity with those in need, and the care of the common home will pass through the hearts, minds and hands of those who are educated today".

Thirdly, he stresses that "what is proper to the Catholic Education in all areas is true humanization, a humanization that springs from faith and generates culture". 

This is supported by the reality that Christ lives and dwells among us: "Christ always dwells in the midst of our homes., speaks our language, accompanies our families and our people".

Finally, he thanked the commitment of so many people in favor of the Catholic Education in Spain that, at the same time, contribute to the cultural identity of our society; taking into account that "the Education is a choral work, which always asks for partnership and work in network", social friendship, culture of meeting and craftsmanship of peace.

In the context of a speech to congress "Man-woman image of God. For an anthropology of vocations" (1-III-2024), Francis pronounced himself on the "ugliness" of gender ideology, insofar as it tends to annul the differences between men and women and, therefore, to cancel humanity. 

Above all, he pointed out, it is necessary to rediscover that "the path of the human being is vocation", because man himself is vocation. "Each one of us discovers and expresses himself as called, as a call, as a person who fulfills himself in listening and responding, sharing his being and his gifts with others for the common good." 

This is reflected in our behavior: "This finding makes us come out of the isolation of a self-referential self and makes us look at ourselves as an identity in relationship: I exist and live in relationship with the one who has engendered me, with the reality that transcends me, with others and the world around me, with respect to which I am called to embrace with joy and responsibility a specific mission statement and staff".

The Pope explained that today there is a tendency to forget this reality, reducing the person to his material needs or primary demands, as if he were an object without conscience or will, dragged through life as part of a mechanical cog. 

"Instead," he observed, " man and woman are created by God and are the image of the Creator; that is to say, they carry within them a desire for eternity and happiness that God himself has sown in their hearts and they are called to realize through a specific vocation. This is an inner tension that we must not extinguish, for we are called to happiness.

This has important consequences: "The life of each one of us, without excluding anyone, is not an accident of the road; our being in the world is not a mere fruit of chance, but we are part of a plan of love and we are invited to go out of ourselves and to realize it, for ourselves andfor others".

The successor of Peter pointed out that this is not a task external to our lives, but "a dimension that involves our very nature, the structure of our being man-woman in the image and likeness of God". 

And he insisted: "Not only have we been entrusted with a mission statement, but each and every one of us is a mission statement". Here he took up again some words said earlier: "I am always a mission statement; you are always a mission statement; every baptized person is a mission statement. Whoever loves sets himself in motion, goes out of himself, is attracted and attracts, gives himself to the other and weaves relationships that generate life. For the love of God no one is useless and insignificant" (workshop world missions, 2019).

He evoked, to this purpose, the illuminating words of the saintly Cardinal Newman: "I have been created to do and to be someone for what no other has been created. (...) I have my own mission statement. In some way I am necessary to his intentions". And also: "[God] has not created me uselessly. I will do good, I will do his work. I will be an angel of peace, a preacher of the truth in the place he has appointed me and even if I do not know it, so that I may follow his commandments and serve him in my vocation"(Meditazioni e preghiere, Milano 2002, 38-39).

Francis pointed out the need and importance of deepening these themes, in order to spread "the awareness of the vocation to which every human being is called by God, in the various states of life and thanks to their multiple charisms". Also to question the current challenges in relation to the anthropological crisis and the necessary promotion of human and Christian vocations.

The importance, in this regard, of developing "an ever more effective circularity among the various vocations, so that the works that flow from the lay state of life at the service of society and the Church, together with the gift of the ordained ministry and the consecrated life, can contribute to generating hope in a world over which heavy experiences of death are looming".

Finally, it is worth noting the Pope's speech to the dicastery for evangelization (15-III-2024), in connection with the preparation of the Jubilee of 2025. 

In tracing the framework of contemporary challenges, he underlined the secularism (living as if God did not exist) of recent decades, the loss of a sense of belonging in the Christian community and indifference to the faith. These challenges need adequate responses, also taking into account the digital culture in which we find ourselves: to know how to situate the legitimacy of today's much-claimed autonomy of the person, but not at the margin of God. 

After this introduction the Pope pointed out three important themes at this time and in view of the Jubilee of 2025.

In the first place, the rupture in the transmission of the faith. To this purpose he pointed out the urgency of recovering the relationship with families and the centers of training. And he pointed out that faith is transmitted above all through the witness of life. A testimony that has a center: "Faith in the Risen Lord, which is the heart of evangelization, to be transmitted requires a meaningful experience, lived in the family and in the Christian community as a life-changing meeting with Jesus Christ".

At framework he stressed the importance of catechesis. Also in this context, he emphasized the ministry of the catechist, especially in the area of youth, at the service of evangelization. 

A third call for attention, in the same framework, was addressed by the Pope to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, reference letter fundamental for the Education of the faith. "In this regard I encourage you to find ways in which the Catechism of the Catholic Church can continue to be known, studied and appreciated, so that it can provide answers to the new needs that have emerged over the decades".

Second topic: mercy, as the "fundamental content of the work of evangelization" that we must circulate through the veins of the body of the Church. "God is mercy," as St. John Paul II announced at the beginning of the third millennium. 

In relation to mercy, Francis pointed out the role of the pastoral care of shrines and also that of the missionaries of mercy, as witnesses of this divine mercy in the sacrament of the Confession of sins. "When evangelization is carried out with the anointing and style of mercy, it finds greater listening, and the heart opens with more availability for conversion".

Finally, the Bishop of Rome referred to the preparation for the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025 under the sign of the power of hope, and announced that in a few weeks the apostolic letter for its launch will be published. Hope will occupy a central place, as a "smaller" virtue that seems to be carried by its two sisters, Faith and Charity, but it is also the one that sustains them (Francis often evokes this passage from the works of Paul Claudel in The Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue, in 1911).