Dear young people, good morning!

What a joy it is to meet you! Thank you! I have been looking forward to this moment with great excitement. Being with you reminds me of the years when I taught mathematics to lively young people like you. Thank you for accepting the invitation to come here today and to share your reflections and hopes, which I will pass on to our friends throughout the world.

I would like to begin by recalling Pier Giorgio Frassati, an Italian student who, as you know, was canonized during this Jubilee Year. With his passionate love for God and neighbor, this young saint coined two phrases that he often repeated, almost like a motto: “To live without faith … is not living but simply getting along” and “To the heights.” These are very true and encouraging words. So I say to you as well: have the courage to live life to the fullest. Do not settle for appearances or fads; a life stifled by fleeting pleasures will never satisfy us. Instead, let each of you say in your heart: “I dream of more, Lord; I long for something greater; inspire me!” This desire is your strength and expresses well the commitment of young people who envision a better society and refuse to be mere spectators. I encourage you, therefore, to keep striving “toward the heights,” lighting the beacon of hope in the dark hours of history. How wonderful it would be if one day your generation were remembered as the “generation plus,” remembered for the extra drive you brought to the Church and the world.

But, dear young people, this cannot remain the dream of one person alone. Let us unite to make it happen, bearing witness together to the joy of believing in Jesus Christ. How can we achieve this? The answer is simple: through education, one of the most beautiful and powerful tools for changing the world.

Five years ago, our beloved Pope Francis launched the great project of the Global Compact on Education, an alliance of all those who, in various ways, work in the field of education and culture, to engage younger generations in universal fraternity. You, in fact, are not just recipients of education, but its protagonists. That is why today I ask you to join forces to open a new season of education, in which all of us — young people and adults — become credible witnesses of truth and peace. I say to you: you are called to be truth-speakers and peace-makers, people who stand by their word and are builders of peace. Involve your peers in the search for truth and the cultivation of peace, expressing these two passions with your lives, your words and your daily actions.

In this regard, I would like to add to the example of Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati a reflection by Saint John Henry Newman, a scholarly saint who will soon be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. He said that knowledge grows when it is shared, and that it is through the conversation of minds that the flame of truth is kindled. Similarly, true peace is born when many lives, like stars, come together and form a pattern. Together, we can form educational constellations that guide the path forward.

As a former teacher of mathematics and physics, allow me to do some calculations with you. Perhaps you will take a test in mathematics shortly. We will see. Do you know how many stars there are in the observable universe? An impressive and wonderful number: a sextillion stars — that is, a 1 followed by 21 zeros! If we divided them among the 8 billion people on Earth, each person would have hundreds of billions of stars. With the naked eye, on clear nights, we can see about five thousand. Even though there are billions upon billions of stars, we only see the closest constellations; yet these are enough to point us in a direction, as when navigating the sea.

Travelers have always found their way by the stars. Sailors followed the North Star; Polynesians crossed the ocean by memorizing star maps. According to the farmers of the Andes, whom I knew as a missionary in Peru, the sky is an open book that marks the seasons of sowing, shearing, and the cycles of life. Even the Magi followed a star to reach Bethlehem and worship the Baby Jesus.

Like them, you too have guiding stars: parents, teachers, priests and good friends, who are like compasses that help you not to lose your way amid the ups and downs of life. Like them, you are called to become shining witnesses for those around you. But, as I said, a single star on its own remains just a point of light. When it joins with others, however, it forms a constellation, like the Southern Cross. This is how it is with you: each of you is a star, and together you are called to guide the future. Education brings people together into lively communities and organizes ideas into constellations of meaning. As the prophet Daniel writes, “Those who lead many to righteousness shall shine like the stars forever” (Dan 12:3).  How wonderful! We are stars indeed, because we are sparks of God. To educate means to cultivate this gift.

Education, in fact, teaches us to look upward, always higher. When Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the sky, he discovered new worlds: the moons of Jupiter, the mountains of the Moon. Education is like a telescope that allows you to look beyond and discover what you would not see on your own. So do not remain fixated on your smartphones and their fleeting bursts of images; instead, look to the sky, to the heights.

 Dear young people, you yourselves proposed the first of the new challenges that call for our commitment in the Global Compact on Education, expressing a strong and clear desire. You said: “Help us in our education of the interior life.” I was truly struck by this request. Having a great deal of knowledge is not enough if we do not know who we are or what the meaning of life is. Without silence, without listening, without prayer, even the light of the stars goes out. We can know a great deal about the world and still ignore our own hearts. You too may have experienced that feeling of emptiness or restlessness that does not leave you in peace. In the most serious cases, we see episodes of distress, violence, bullying and oppression — even young people who isolate themselves and no longer want to relate to others. I think that behind this suffering lies also a void created by a society that has forgotten how to form the spiritual dimension of the human person, focusing only on the technical, social or moral aspects of life.

As a young man, Saint Augustine was brilliant but deeply unsatisfied, as we read in his autobiography, The Confessions. He searched everywhere — in success and in pleasure — and got involved in all sorts of things, but he could find neither truth nor peace. When he discovered God in his own heart, he wrote a very profound phrase that applies to all of us: “My heart is restless until it rests in you.” This is what it means to educate ourselves for the interior life: to listen to our restlessness and not flee from it or fill it with things that do not satisfy. Our desire for the infinite is a compass that tells us: “Do not settle — you are made for something greater;” “do not simply get along, but live.”

The second of the new educational challenges is a commitment that affects us every day and in which you are teachers: digital education. You live in it, and that is not a bad thing; there are enormous opportunities for study and communication. But, do not let the algorithm write your story! Be the authors yourselves; use technology wisely, but do not let technology use you.

 Artificial intelligence is also a great novelty — one of the rerum novarum, or “new things,” of our time. However, it is not enough to be “intelligent” in virtual reality; we must also treat one another humanely, nurturing emotional, spiritual, social and ecological intelligence. Therefore, I say to you: learn to humanize the digital, building it as a space of fraternity and creativity — not a cage where you lock yourselves in, not an addiction or an escape. Instead of being tourists on the web, be prophets in the digital world!

In this regard, we have a very timely example of holiness: Saint Carlo Acutis. He was a young man who did not become a slave to the internet, but rather used it skillfully for good. Saint Carlo combined his beautiful faith with his passion for computers, creating a website on Eucharistic miracles and thus making the internet a tool for evangelization. His initiative teaches us that the digital world is educational when it does not close us in on ourselves but opens us to others — when it does not place us at the center but orients us toward God and others.

Dear friends, we finally come to the third great challenge that I entrust to you today — the one at the heart of the new Global Compact on Education: education for peace. You can see how much our future is threatened by war and hatred, which divide people. Can this future be changed? Certainly! How? With an education for peace that is disarmed and disarming. It is not enough, in fact, to silence weapons: we must disarm hearts, renouncing all violence and vulgarity. In this way, a disarming and disarmed education creates equality and growth for all, recognizing the equal dignity of every young person, without ever dividing young people between the privileged few who have access to expensive schools and the many who do not have access to education. With great confidence in you, I invite you to be peacemakers first and foremost where you live — in your families, at school, in sports, and among your friends — reaching out to those who come from other cultures.

In conclusion, dear friends, do not look to shooting stars, on which fragile wishes are entrusted. Look higher still, toward Jesus Christ, “the sun of righteousness” (cf.  Lk 1:78), who will always guide you along the paths of life.