CV NEWS FEED // Pope Francis has penned a detailed letter on the importance of reading literature, especially for seminarians, reflecting on “the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity.”
The “Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation” highlights various spiritual and practical benefits of reading literature. Pope Francis wrote that the letter’s title initially was going to refer specifically to priestly formation, but upon further reflection he determined that “this subject also applies to the formation of all those engaged in pastoral work, indeed of all Christians.”
According to Pope Francis, reading is a healthy form of leisure. For example, it can be beneficial for someone experiencing boredom while on holiday.
Similarly, he continued, “in moments of weariness, anger, disappointment or failure, when prayer itself does not help us find inner serenity, a good book can help us weather the storm until we find peace of mind.”
“Time spent reading may well open up new interior spaces that help us to avoid becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth,” he added.
Compared with reading, audio-visual media typically provides less time to explore and “enrich” the narrative of the story.
“A book demands greater personal engagement on the part of its reader,” Pope Francis wrote:
Readers in some sense rewrite a text, enlarging its scope through their imagination, creating a whole world by bringing into play their skills, their memory, their dreams and their personal history, with all its drama and symbolism.
In this way, what emerges is a text quite different from the one the author intended to write. A literary work is thus a living and ever-fruitful text, always capable of speaking in different ways and producing an original synthesis on the part of each of its readers.
The author’s work allows for the reader “to grow inwardly,” Pope Francis noted, “so that each new work we read will renew and expand our worldview.”
Literature also helps the reader to reflect on the meaning of human life in the world, Pope Francis wrote.
He also highlighted being grateful that some seminaries have responded “to the obsession with ‘screens’ and with toxic, superficial and violent fake news, by devoting time and attention to literature;” but he lamented that priestly formation programs don’t typically employ literature.
Often, he wrote, literature is seen as simply entertainment that is unnecessary for seminary formation.
“I consider it important to insist that such an approach is unhealthy,” Pope Francis continued. “It can lead to the serious intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of future priests, who will be deprived of that privileged access which literature grants to the very heart of human culture and, more specifically, to the heart of every individual.”
Pope Francis noted that everyone will have their own reading interests. He shared that he enjoys reading literature of the tragedians.
Reflecting on encountering and evangelizing cultures, Pope Francis argued that literature is “essential for believers who sincerely seek to enter into dialogue with the culture of their time, or simply with the lives and experiences of other people.”
There are also personal benefits to reading, Pope Francis noted, highlighting that scientists have pointed out that habitual reading helps people “acquire a wider vocabulary and thus develop broader intellectual abilities.”
“It also stimulates their imagination and creativity, enabling them to learn to tell their stories in richer and more expressive ways,” Pope Francis continued, adding that reading “improves their ability to concentrate, reduces levels of cognitive decline, and calms stress and anxiety.”
Additionally, reading about how someone prevailed in the end against life’s difficulties can help one “[prepare] to understand and thus deal with various situations that arise in life,” he wrote, noting that wisdom gained from stories may be useful later in one’s own life.
Literature also helps the reader develop empathy and compassion, the Pope argued.
“We develop an imaginative empathy that enables us to identify with how others see, experience and respond to reality,” he wrote. “Without such empathy, there can be no solidarity, sharing, compassion, mercy. In reading we discover that our feelings are not simply our own, they are universal, and so even the most destitute person does not feel alone.”
Pope Francis also wrote that in reading about the limitations, shortcomings, or sufferings of others, “literature teaches us patience in trying to understanding others, humility in approaching complex situations, meekness in our judgment of individuals and sensitivity to our human condition.”
Judgment is important, he argued, but it is important to recognize its limitations.
“The wisdom born of literature instills in the reader greater perspective, a sense of limits, the ability to value experience over cognitive and critical thinking, and to embrace a poverty that brings extraordinary riches,” Pope Francis wrote:
By acknowledging the futility and perhaps even the impossibility of reducing the mystery of the world and humanity to a dualistic polarity of true vs false or right vs wrong, the reader accepts the responsibility of passing judgment, not as a means of domination, but rather as an impetus towards greater listening.
In his conclusion, Pope Francis argued that literature is a great means to cultivate the use of reason, “recognition of the variety of human languages,” and “a great spiritual openness to hearing the Voice that speaks through many voices.”
The literary word “opens our human words to welcome the Word that is already present in human speech, not when it sees itself as knowledge that is already full, definitive and complete, but when it becomes a listening and expectation of the One,” he wrote, recalling the book of Revelation, “who comes to make all things new (cf. Rev 21:5).”
