Pope Leo XIV urges students to humbly seek the truth

The 267th pope offered his advice on how the "search for truth remains truly human." Truth, he explained, "is not fabricated, not manipulated nor possessed like a trophy." Instead, it must be "welcomed, sought with humility and served with responsibility."

He urged higher education institutions to avoid "losing contact with the historical circumstances" in which they are situated. In addition to providing the tools for professional success, universities should offer new generations a “purpose in life, criteria for discernment and motives for serving” others.

Pope Leo XIV noted that a university measures itself more by its ability to “offer the fruits of intelligence and uprightness, of competence and wisdom, of excellence and service," rather than by the "number of graduates or the expansion of its infrastructure." He also encouraged them to promote "progress rooted in solidarity."

The Pontiff used a tree as a metaphor for the university's mission. He offered an interpretation of the Genesis story where God forbids the man and woman from eating the fruit of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil." He assured the students that this text is not "a condemnation of knowledge as such, as if faith was afraid of intelligence or looked with suspicion upon the desire for knowledge."

The Pope then pointed out the temptation of seeking "knowledge separated from truth and goodness." This pursuit shouldn't become "a prideful affirmation of self-sufficiency, opening the road to confusion, which can eventually become inhumane." Rather, it must remain "the path towards wisdom," he explained.

For the Pope, Christianity presents "a truth revealed, Jesus Christ, who far from imposing his own will, offers himself through love." This truth "precedes human beings, challenges them and calls them to come out of themselves," he affirmed. He clarified that Christ is not "a religious escape in the face of intellectual endeavors, as if faith began where reason ended."

Faith, he added, "far from shutting itself off from this search, purifies it of self-sufficiency and opens it to a fullness towards which reason strives, even if it cannot completely embrace it."