Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Letter on education, Drawing New Maps of Hope (27 October 2025) is a concise position paper on how the Catholic Church “sees” education today. All with an interest in culture and education will find therein some tasty food for thought. Its eleven sections plot a careful course through a cluster of contemporary issues for the Church and society, offering insights that encourage educators to think through in detail how the Church’s mission to educate can be fruitfully applied in different contexts.
Drawing on Vatican II’s document on education Gravissimum educationis, Pope Leo reminds us at the outset that “education is not an ancillary activity, but forms the very fabric of evangelization: it is the concrete way in which the Gospel becomes an educational gesture, a relationship, a culture.” What does this mean?
In the first place, it reminds us that Catholic education is, and must always be, rooted in the message of the Gospel. This is a springboard for Catholic educational institutions to develop an educational culture that translates the Gospel into educational language.
Second is Pope Leo’s focus on how education becomes “a relationship”. This topic in itself might be worthy of a few seminars but in essence it reflects an Augustinian view of the teacher who points the pupil /student to a relationship with Christ as the centre and goal of education.
Another notable feature of the Apostolic Letter is the importance given to the genealogy of Catholic education. Section 2 lists key historical figures whose work and influence need to be rediscovered, such as, for example, Jean Baptiste de La Salle, John Bosco, Francesca Cabrini and Elizabeth Ann Seton. These and other names are reminders that “pedagogy is never disembodied theory, but flesh, passion and history.” Quite!
Pope Leo also relaunches the Global Compact in Education, an initiative of Pope Francis from 2019 that never quite took off owing to the restrictions on gathering arising from the pandemic. Pope Leo adds three new priorities to the original seven priorities. In brief these are: the inner life, the digital human and unarmed/disarming peace. This extension offers scope for further and deeper examination at a local level on how schools, colleges and universities can be sites of hope.
To conclude, Pope Leo has presented the universal Church with a short but powerful charter for education. It is now time to first read his words attentively, discuss collegially with close colleagues how to concretise them and then draw our own maps of hope for local audiences.
PS
If you want to read more about the Global Compact on Education as originally envisioned by Pope Francis, see the appendix in my volume on religious education available here.
Leonardo Franchi
School of Education, University of Glasgow
School of Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame Australia
Nice reflection L. There is always a challenge in understanding the distinctions between the educational and the activist modes and more work to be done.
J