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Illustration: The Virgin Hodegetria panel painting (first half of 13th century)
Pope Francis’ Address to the professors and students
of the Theological Institute of Saint Paul
(Catania, Sicily)
Clementine Hall – Friday, 6 December 2024
“Know how to “abound in hope”.
Your Eminence, Your Excellencies, dear sisters and brothers,
I greet the Moderator of the Theological Studium, the Director of the Studium, the teachers and the officials, and the students.
The Theological Studium of San Paolo can be considered one of the first fruits of The Second Vatican Council: it was founded in 1969, when the Dioceses of Eastern Sicily decided to create a single place of theological formation, which over time has proven fruitful for priests, religious and laypeople.
I encourage you to continue along this path: to continue to walk together, offering a broad formation that is incisive in ecclesial and social life.
Together with the Faculty of Theology of Palermo, to which it is attached, your Studium constitutes a model that also stimulates other Churches to walk together in this area.
Indeed, when we speak of communion, we must also include the relationship between formative structures, which, inspired by theological reflection, become laboratories of communion and mission,. The recent Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops emphasized the synodal dimension of the ministry of theologians and theological institutions.
The mission of theological studies cannot ignore the territory in which is located.
In this way, even in your academic journey, you experience an ecclesiality, hat brings you together in the diversity of vocations and gifts and in the search for new ways of evangelization.
This too is a sign of the times, to be grasped with wisdom.
It is a style of co-responsibility in which you are being “trained” today and which should continue in the life of your Churches, valuing the charisms of each person.
Over the years, there has been an increase in the number of women students among you, who are now integrated into your ecclesiastical communities with tasks of pastoral responsibility, religious education and academic teaching:
This too is a sign of the times, in an area where women have often been devalued in their social role.
But let us not forget that Sicily is the homeland of the martyr Saints Agatha and Lucy, who were the “seed” of a robust faith, capable of renewal and of producing ever new witnesses, such as, for example, in our time, Blessed Giuseppe Puglisi and Blessed Rosario Livatino.
Your country has wonderful natural and artistic beauties, which are unfortunately – unfortunately – threatened by mafia speculation and corruption, which hinder development and impoverish resources, especially in the interior, and cause the emigration of young people.
The Mafia always impoverishes. Always.
Sicily needs men and women who can look to the future with hope who can educate new generations to be free and transparent, to care for the common good, to weaken both old and new forms of poverty. And I look at you, young people, and I say to you: in Christ “we learn to relate to one another in a healthy and happy way, and to build in this world God’s kingdom of love and justice”
And work so that the young people who go away to study return.
May Sicily not lose its young people who have gone away to study.
“Our hearts, united to the Heart of Christ, are capable of working this social miracle” (Encyclical Letter Dilexit nos, 28).
Be aware that the culture and formation of theological Studies are at the service of the people, the poor, the least.
In yout country, which has always been a crossroads of peoples, many migrants land and many stay and integrate: I urge you to be welcoming, to be creative in fraternity.
And this commitment will be more fruitful if you know how to enter into dialogue with the cultures and religions of the other peoples of the Mediterranean, who look to the future with hope.
Please, let us not extinguish the hope of the poor, the poor who are the migrants!
And be welcoming to migrants. Integrate migrants.
You also face the challenge of Muslim migrants: how to integrate them and help them to enter into the dioceses.
Your theological Studies have established a fruitful relationship with the University of Catania, the oldest cultural institution in Sicily, and many lecturers are involved in courses on Christian literature, law, and bioethics.
This collaboration will certainly benefit you, because it opens your studies and your future to a dialogue that must always be cultivated, in order to better understand the world in which you live and to inculcate the faith.
On the other hand, it offers a fruitful contribution to the culture of your people, which is marked by the tragic nature of certain life experiences.
I am thinking of the great writers of Sicilian literature, in particular Verga, who populates his novels with ‘losers’, resigned to pain and poverty. And I also think of a film that reflects this well: ‘Kaos’.
I saw it three times, because I had to teach it. But it reflects well your culture.
In dialogue with this culture, which expresses itself in so many ways of living and thinking, know how to bring hope and commitment, know how to “abound in hope”.
Never abound in complaint, in resignation, no…
Complaining is a thing for people who have no courage. No, go forward with hope, and be missionaries of hope. Go on, be courageous!
Brothers and sisters, today we celebrate the liturgical memorial of Saint Nicholas, a saint who unites East and West, a pastor of the Church who reminds us of the Council of Nicaea, in which he participated and where he dedicated himself to the defending the faith in the divinity of Christ.
I ask you also to heed my appeal on the occasion of the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, so that it may be “a call to all Churches and ecclesial Communities to persevere in the journey towards visible unity” (Bull Spes non confundit, 17).
Let us not grow weary, but seek appropriate ways to respond fully to Jesus’ prayer “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21).
May the Blessed Virgin Hodegetria (holding the child), Patroness of Sicily, always accompany you on your journey.
I cordially bless you. And please, pray for me! Thank you.
