In the audience in the Vatican, Leon XIV adopted on the eve of the inauguration of his pontificate members of the Centesimus Annus pro pontifice Foundation. Its name comes from the social title of John Paul II from 1991, announced on the hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Encyclical Leo XIII “Rerum Novarum”, which is the foundation of Catholic social science.
Leon XIV said during the meeting that “the social teaching of the Church with her anthropological look wants to allow real access to social issues.” “It is not intended to raise the banner of having the truth either in terms of analysis of problems or solving them,” he explained.
– It is more important to be able to get closer than to give a hasty answer about what happened and how to overcome it. The goal is to learn to solve problems that are always different, because each generation is new, has new challenges, new dreams, new questions – said the Pope.
Pope Leon XIV about “dialogue and indoctrination”
He emphasized the need to build a “meeting of the meeting through dialogue and social friendship.” – Due to the sensitivity of many of our contemporaries, the word: dialogue and word: doctrine sounds opposite and incompatible – he added.
Therefore, in his opinion, it should be shown that in the Church a synonym of doctrine as science is knowledge. Understood in this way, he explained, he is “the fruit of scientific research and hypotheses, voices, progress and failures, through which he tries to convey a reliable, orderly and systematic knowledge on a specific topic.”
“It is not unambiguous with the opinion, but it is a common, compatible and multidisciplinary path to the truth,” he said.
Leon XIV said that “indoctrination is immoral, prevents critical judgment and threatens holy freedom of respect for his conscience, closes to new reflections, because it rejects movement, changes and evolution of ideas in the face of new problems.” To the members of the Foundation, the Pope appealed to listen to the voice of the poor, whom he called “the treasure of the Church and humanity.”
