Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Pope Francis speaks to members of the Blanquerna Foundation at Ramon Llull University based in Barcelona, Spain, during a meeting at the Vatican May 3, 2024. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis said that some universities are “too liberal” and do not place enough emphasis on forming their students into whole people.

Speaking May 3 on the need for holistic higher education, the pope noted by contrast “some universities I know in America that are too liberal and only seek to train technicians and specialists.”

“They forget that they have to form men and women, people of integrity who try to give the best of themselves in the service to which God calls them,” he said, while “knowing that they are pilgrims, that in reality everything is a journey toward a goal that surpasses this reality.”

Pope Francis’ comments came during a meeting with members of the Blanquerna Foundation at Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, Spain, and named after Blessed Ramon Llull, a Catholic philosopher, poet and theologian who died in 1315.

The pope said that young people need an education that helps them find inspiration in figures like Blessed Ramon who offer “simple models of life, natural models of life in which we can serve the Lord and be happy,” rather than “fantastic heroes who seek to evade our reality.”

Pope Francis praised the foundation, which began as a school for teacher training inspired by the principles of Christian humanism, for instilling in young people “the certainty that the steps of the Christian hero are not marked by the desire for careerism but are a response to a call.”

“Careerism does so much harm,” he said, “ because it is not communitarian, it is individualistic, and that does harm.”

Instead, “being called to positions of even greater responsibility must be the result of excellence in the service entrusted to a person,” the pope said.

And after achieving a goal or task, he added, “the Christian must tend to an encounter with the Lord, to a full dedication to divine service.”

The latest from america

Paola Ugaz, a Peruvian journalist who helped expose the abuse committed by leaders of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, gives Pope Leo XIV a stole made of alpaca wool, during the pope's meeting with members of the media May 12, 2025, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
Pope Leo offered a heartening message for a global media that has endured a pretty awful year.
Kevin ClarkeMay 23, 2025
If you think our enthusiasm for our basketball team was intense, just wait until you see our support for Pope Leo XIV.
Jack DoolinMay 23, 2025
“I don’t think he’s the kind of man who sends coded messages,” Cardinal Michael Czerny says in this exclusive interview with Gerard O’Connell.
Gerard O’ConnellMay 23, 2025
First-grade students finish an assignment at St. Ambrose Catholic School in Tucson, Ariz., in this 2014 photo. Arizona has one of the nation’s strongest school choice programs, with vouchers available to every child in the state. (CNS file photo/Nancy Wiechec)
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling denying state funds to a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. What should American Catholics be asking about public funding for school choice?
Beth BlaufussMay 23, 2025