VATICAN CITY — Detailing his vision for Catholic education during an audience with the President and Board of Trustees of the American University of Notre Dame on Thursday, Pope Francis said Catholic institutions of higher learning must not only “expand the mind, the head, but must expand the heart as well.”

 Since the beginning of his papacy Francis has insisted on the importance of what he calls the “three languages” when speaking to educators and about education. Addressing a crowd of 300,000 students, teachers, and parents in Saint Peter’s Square in May, 2014, the pontiff said that schools should verse their students in the “three languages that a mature person should know how to express: the language of the mind, the language of the heart and the language of the hands.”

 Francis told the International Federation of Catholic Universities’ convention in November, 2019, that “it is necessary to overcome the legacy of the Enlightenment.” An effective education generally, he said, “but particularly in universities, is not just filling the head with concepts. It takes three languages.” 

 He stressed those three languages once again in his remarks at Notre Dame. Catholic universities should teach the language of the head by encouraging interdisciplinary research and scholarship, he said. 

 A Catholic education should teach its students the language of the hands — “the building of a better world” — by encouraging them to “strive to go out to the peripheries and meet and serve Christ in our neighbor.” Francis commended Notre Dame for a legacy of student engagement with underprivileged communities. 

 The pope had the most to say about what he called “the essential role of religion” in educating students’ hearts. Invoking the three transcendentals, he said that schools and universities are responsible for cultivating young people’s openness “to all that is true, good, and beautiful.” 

 Those elements together, he told the crowd of 300,000 in 2014, “make us grow and help us to love life, even when we are unwell, even amid difficulties.” To the Notre Dame administrators he said that a true education of the heart provides “hope and strength in facing wisely the challenges of the present time.”

 Francis encouraged educators at Notre Dame to foster a culture of intellectual dialogue and encounter in the service of the heart. He has previously called schools “a complement to the family” in their ability to teach students how to encounter others, “to love one another, to journey together.” 

 He ended his address by reaffirming his support for a Catholic education as what Notre Dame founder Father Edward Sorin described as ‘a powerful means for good’ in society.