VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis received the heads of Vodafone at the Holy See for a private meeting to discuss the mobile phone network giant’s “Instant Schools for Africa” project, the Vatican said Thursday.

 Vittorio Colao, the CEO of Vodafone, Gerard Kleisterlee, the company’s president, and Aldo Bisio, the administrative manager of Vodafone Italy, met with the pope Wednesday to talk about their “Instant Schools for Africa” project.

 The pontiff expressed his great appreciation of the phone company’s efforts to give disadvantaged young Africans -- of which many in refugee camps -- internet access, and he suggested that they be taught to use the internet as a tool in a “free and critical manner.”

 He also expressed his wish for providing electronic access “to the sacred texts of different religions, in different languages.”

 Francis approved of the act of “doing things that push humanity forwards instead of only showing how bombs always fall on the innocent, children, the ill, and even whole cities. Build, not destroy!”

 “This project can be inserted in the wide and varied horizon of public and private interventions to promote a more inclusive and supportive world, capable of offering opportunities of development to people and social groups who are at risk of exclusion,” the Argentinian pope continued.

 “I express my appreciation for this initiative and let me allow myself to suggest that, in carrying it out, that you may take care of equipping the youngsters also with some notion of method so that they may learn not only to use these instruments but also to use them as instruments, becoming capable of taking advantage of them in a free and critical way,” he concluded.

 nkd