Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — The troves of knowledge stored in archives and libraries must be made available and accessible to all people, especially as they increasingly depend on technological means for their knowledge, Pope Francis said.
Scholars overseeing archives and managing libraries must have “a great openness to discussion and dialogue,” Pope Francis told professors and students from the Vatican’s archival and library sciences schools May 13. He encouraged them to develop “a readiness to welcome,” especially the marginalized and those suffering “material, cultural and spiritual poverties.”
The pope encouraged the Vatican School of Paleography, Diplomatic and Archival Studies and the Vatican School of Library Studies to avoid becoming complacent in distributing knowledge.
Pope Francis highlighted humanity’s “increasingly complex relationship with technology,” the challenges of engaging with and studying traditional cultures and the responsibility of scholars to “defend all from the toxic, unhealthy and violent things that can lurk in the world of social media and technological knowledge.”