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CONCLUSION

54. "In a world where cultural challenge is the first, the most provocative and the most effect-bearing"[59], the Catholic school is well aware of the onerous commitments it is called to face and it preserves its utmost importance even in present circumstances.

55. When it is animated by lay and consecrated persons that live the same educational mission in sincere unity, the Catholic school shows the face of a community that tends towards an increasingly deeper communion. This communion knows how to be welcoming with regard to people as they mature, making them feel, through the maternal solicitude of the Church, that God carries the life of each son and daughter of His in His heart. It knows how to involve young people in a global formation experience, to direct and accompany, in the light of the Good News, their search for meaning, even in unusual and often tortuous forms, but with an alarming urgency. A communion, finally, that inasmuch as it is based on Christ, acknowledges Him and announces Him to each and everyone as the only true Master (cf. Matt 23:8).

56. In presenting this document to those who live the educational mission in the Church, we entrust all Catholic schools to the Virgin Mary, Mother and educator of Christ and of persons, so that, like the servants at the wedding of Cana, they may humbly follow her loving invitation: "Do whatever He tells you" (Jn 2:5) and may they, thus, be together with the whole Church, "the home and the school of communion"[60] for the men and women of our time.

The Holy Father, during the Audience granted to the undersigned Prefect, approved this document and authorized its publication.

Rome, 8th September 2007, Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Zenon Card. Grocholewski

Prefect

Msgr. Angelo Vincenzo Zani

Undersecretary