Pope Francis urges professors to ‘seek the truth’ in visit to 600-year-old Belgian university

Rome Newsroom, Sep 27, 2024 / 14:00 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis told university professors to “seek the truth” in a speech critiquing academia’s tendencies toward relativism and “a technocratic culture” during a visit to a 600-year-old university in Belgium.

The pope addressed academics at KU Leuven, a Belgian Catholic research university, on Friday afternoon to mark the 600th anniversary of its founding.

In his speech, Pope Francis lamented how relativism today is causing “intellectual weariness,” as it “consigns us to a permanent state of uncertainty, lacking all passion, as if the search for meaning were useless and reality were incomprehensible.”

Pope Francis speaks next to Belgian sociology Professor Luc Sels during a meeting with academics at KU Leuven, a Belgian Catholic research university, on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

The pope also criticized the “soulless rationalism” conditioned by “a technocratic culture” at many modern universities.

“When human beings are regarded as mere matter, when reality is constrained within the limits of what is visible, when reason is reduced to mathematical and experimental sciences, much is lost,” he said. 

“In this way, we lose our sense of wonder … our ability to marvel, which urges us to look beyond, to raise our eyes heavenward, to discover that hidden truth, which responds to such fundamental questions as: Why am I alive? What is the meaning of my life? What is the ultimate aim and purpose of this journey?” 

“The Holy Spirit we have received as a gift urges us to search, to open up spaces for our thought and action, until he leads us into the fullness of truth,” Francis added.

The pope was welcomed to the university by its rector, sociology professor Luc Sels, and Archbishop Luc Terlinden of Malines-Brussels.

KU Leuven is the largest university in Belgium with more than 65,000 students. Classes at the university are mainly taught in Dutch and some English.

The Leuven town hall towers beneath a cloudy sky as Pope Francis meets with academics at KU Leuven on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

“The first task of a university is to offer integral formation so that students may be equipped with the tools needed for interpreting the present and planning for the future. Yet cultural formation is never an end in itself,” Pope Francis said. “It is a fine thing to view universities as generating culture and ideas, but above all as promoting the passion for seeking truth, at the service of human progress.”

“In a particular way, Catholic universities such as yours are called to ‘offer the decisive contribution of leaven, salt, and light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the living tradition of the Church, which is ever open to new situations and ideas,’” he added, quoting Veritatis Gaudium.

At the end of the university visit, Pope Francis met with a group of young refugees in the Rector’s Hall and then greeted the approximately 5,000 people gathered in the main square of Leuven in a golf cart before returning to the apostolic nunciature to conclude the day.

Pope Francis greets visitors in the Leuven town square after meeting with academics at KU Leuven, a Belgian Catholic research university, on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA

“Be restless seekers of truth, and do not allow your enthusiasm to wane lest you yield to intellectual lethargy,” Pope Francis said in his message to the Catholic university.

Pope Francis’ visit to Belgium

Pope Francis is visiting three cities in Belgium to mark the 600th anniversary of the Catholic universities of Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve from Sept. 26–29.

After making a one-day stopover in Luxembourg on Sept. 26 the pope arrived in Brussels on Thursday evening in the pouring rain.

Pope Francis began his first full day in Belgium with an official visit to Laeken Castle on Friday morning, where he met with King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of the Belgians.

The pope also addressed 300 dignitaries and political authorities, including Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, in the castle’s Grand Gallery, where he lamented the country’s clerical abuse crisis and advocated for peace.

On Saturday, Francis is scheduled to meet with Belgium’s bishops, as well as local clergy and religious, in the Koekelberg National Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Brussels.

After lunch, he will make the just-under-one hour drive to visit Louvain-la-Neuve, a university city about 18 miles southeast of the capital city. The town hosts the French-language Catholic University of Leuven, which split from KU Leuven in the late 1960s.

Pope Francis will spend the afternoon meeting with university students in Louvain-la-Nueve before holding a private audience with Jesuits at St. Michel College back in Brussels.

On his final day in the Low Countries on Sept. 29, the pontiff will celebrate Sunday Mass in the King Baudouin Stadium before returning to Rome in the afternoon.