Rome (Italy). On 14 November 2025 in Rome, at the Aula Magna John Paul II of the Pontifical Faculty of Education Sciences «Auxilium», in the presence of students, lecturers, administrative staff, Mother Chiara Cazzuola, Superior General of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and Grand Chancellor, Sister Ausilia De Siena, General Councilor for Communication, the Superior of the Preprovince Mary Mother of the Church (RMC), Sister Jessica Salvaña, the Mother General Emeritus, Sister Yvonne Reungoat, officially inaugurated the 2025/2026 Academic Year.
The morning opened with the Eucharistic Celebration presided over by Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Rector Major Emeritus and former Grand Chancellor of the Faculty, who expressed his joy of finding himself again “in the family”, especially in the presence of young people.
In the homily of the votive Mass of the Holy Spirit, he began by recalling that “there is no educational gesture, honest search, or formative path that does not arise from His discreet and profound Presence”. Commenting on the Readings, he highlighted how authentic education “is not showing what I know; it is allowing the other to feel understood, welcomed, valued in their inner language, in their culture, in their history. The Holy Spirit creates communion in diversity. This is also the task of our Faculty, an international and intercultural place called to form women and men capable of dialogue, listening, closeness, and educative proximity.”
He also urged us to keep in mind that “the Spirit is the protagonist of any educational project, Christian and Salesian” and that “the educational work needs more than ever a ‘new Pentecost’ to educate people to think critically and with freedom, to build bridges and not walls, to accompany young people in their integral growth, to seek the Truth with rigor and passion, to inhabit an evangelical, supportive, and fraternal world.” He ended by inviting all to walk in the Spirit and wishing for a year that will undoubtedly be fruitful, “if the Holy Spirit is not only invoked at the beginning, but heard every day. He is the wind that opens roads, the fire that warms hearts, the peace that restores, the strength that sustains.”
This was followed by the Report, “Educating for Peace: the knowledge that heals the world” by the Dean, Sister Piera Silvia Ruffinatto, on the Academic Year 2024-25, a year full of events and happenings including the passing of Pope Francis, “a beloved Pontiff who has always recognized the transformative value of education” and who, “with an unprecedented gesture of trust,” on 9 December 2021, he appointed Mother Chiara Cazzuola as Grand Chancellor of the Faculty, “making her the first and only Grand Chancellor of a Pontifical Faculty entrusted by the Holy See to a female religious institute” and the elections of Pope Leo XIV and of Fr. Fabio Attard as the XI Successor of Don Bosco.
Sister Piera continued by presenting the many educational and academic activities, accompanied by statistical data from the educational world, and then concluded by expressing the “dual awareness” of a responsibility that challenges as an educational community and of the transformative fruitfulness that knowledge can have when it places itself at the service of the individual and the common good:
“Educating for peace means recognizing that every formative act is also an act of care. (…) The world needs this care. It needs educational institutions that are peace workshops, where it is concretely experienced that another way of being together is possible. It needs teachers, students, and researchers who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty with the wounds of the present, but who can look beyond, imagining and building more just and fraternal futures. Building bridges of hope and dialogue is also the goal that will accompany the University Pastoral activities this academic year!”
After the musical interval, performed by Maestro Sofia Colaiacomo on the piano, the vice Principal, Sister Martha Séïde, introduced the Rector of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Prof. Elena Beccalli, with the inaugural address, “Educating with Artificial Intelligence. Between ambivalences and responsibilities.”
“We must have no qualms about arguing that we are facing a real cultural revolution, which invites us to reflect on our own idea of intelligence and meaning.” She began by illustrating the foundations and avant-garde of AI, which she recommended to address with “an approach that places technology within a horizon of relational intelligence,” to then bring valuable reflections and proposals to the educational field:
“All this led me to propose an Educational Pact for New Technologies and Artificial Intelligence, which can be understood as a further pillar of the Global Compact on Education, with a view to digital education that responds to one of the three new educational challenges outlined by Pope Leo XIV. The network of Catholic institutions can promote the Covenant. In particular, the Catholic and Pontifical Universities can operate as laboratories for cultivating emotional, spiritual, relational, and social intelligence, expertly and creatively conducting thorough research on the complex relationship between artificial and human intelligence, and helping to highlight the potential it can bring to various fields of science and reality always guiding them towards ethically qualified applications and in the service of social cohesion and the common good.”
The last part of the morning was dedicated to official documents: Mother Chiara Cazzuola, Grand Chancellor of the Faculty, proclaimed Sister Rosangela Siboldi Professor Emeritus of Pastoral Theology.
The Grand Chancellor then officially declared the 2025-2026 academic year open, 56th year of the Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences «Auxilium», with the hope “that the university experience will enable you to take a new look; that it will help you recount and proclaim the reasons for the hope that is in you; that you can become women and men ‘standing’, never hunched over yourselves, as was the curved woman of the Gospel whom Jesus heals, restoring to her the ability to ‘see beyond’, to look up.”
Photos: Flickr FMA
