The difficulties faced by young people must serve as “springboards” to “adopt new languages to continue to touch the hearts of pupils,” said Pope Leo XIV on May 15, 2025, during an audience with the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, commonly known as the Christian Brothers.
The pontiff praised the pedagogical revolution that St. John Baptist de La Salle brought to education through the Christian Brothers and their schools.
This institute has more than 3,000 brothers, who work with 90,000 educators and numerous lay collaborators in 1,100 educational institutions involving more than one million students in total, in 80 countries.
A pedagogical revolution
Pope Leo XIV highlighted the modernity and “attention to current events” that led John Baptist de La Salle (1651-1719) to innovate in his approach to education, notably by inventing the model of classroom teaching, which would become the norm over time in all schools around the world.
Paying tribute to several elements of the “pedagogical revolution” brought about by the French saint, the pope also mentioned “the adoption of French as the language of instruction,” instead of Latin, and “the involvement of families in the school curriculum.”
“After three centuries, it is good to see how your presence continues to bear the freshness of a rich and vast educational entity, with which, in various parts of the world, you still dedicate yourselves to the formation of the young with enthusiasm, fidelity, and a spirit of sacrifice,” explained Leo XIV, showing his interest in education. Robert Francis Prevost trained as a mathematics teacher in the 1970s.
Facing today’s challenges
Noting that Saint John Baptist de La Salle had the courage to “seek creative answers” and to embark on “new and often unexplored paths,” the Pope invited the Brothers of the Christian Schools to pay attention to the current challenges facing young people.
Leo XIV mentioned in particular “the isolation caused by rampant relational models increasingly marked by superficiality, individualism, and emotional instability.”
He also pointed to “the spread of patterns of thought weakened by relativism” and “the prevalence of rhythms and lifestyles in which there is not enough room for listening, reflection and dialogue,” and which give rise to loneliness.
But these challenges must be “springboards to explore ways, develop tools and adopt new languages to continue to touch the hearts of pupils, helping them and spurring them on to face every obstacle with courage in order to give the best of themselves in life, according to God's plans,” the Pope said.
Teaching as a vocation
He also elaborated on the theme of “teaching lived as ministry and mission, as consecration in the Church.” The members of this institute are not priests but simply “brothers,” he notes. Echoing the words of Pope Francis in his address on May 21, 2022, to the participants in the General Chapter of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, Leo XIV mentioned “the principle of evangelizing by educating, and educating by evangelizing.”
In line with the Second Vatican Council, the Pope urged the Brothers of the Christian Schools to contribute to “the growth of the Church and its continuous sanctification” by encouraging vocations in schools and outside them, helping to “joyful and fruitful paths of holiness among the young people who attend them.”
Saint John Baptist de La Salle was born in Reims in 1651 and died in Rouen in 1719. He didn’t live to see the formal recognition of the statutes of his institute by the pope, but his work was recognized during his lifetime by the Church as pioneering in education open to all, especially the poor. He was beatified in 1888 and canonized in 1900 by Leo XIII.
This first audience of the new pope with a religious institution was organized on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the approval of this institute and its rule by Pope Benedict XIII in 1725, and the 75th anniversary of the proclamation by Pius XII of Saint John Baptist de La Salle as “Heavenly Patron of All Educators.”
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