The Dicastery for Culture and Education

What article 153 says

Article 153 of Praedicate Evangelium, which opens the section devoted to the Dicastery, sets out its general mission and internal structure in two paragraphs:

"The Dicastery for Culture and Education works for the development of human values within the horizon of Christian anthropology, contributing to the full realization of persons in the following of Jesus Christ. The Dicastery is composed of the Section for Culture, which is devoted to the promotion of culture, pastoral animation and the enhancement of the cultural heritage, and of the Section for Education, which studies the fundamental principles of education concerning Catholic and ecclesiastical schools and higher institutes of studies and research; it is competent for hierarchical recourses in these matters." — Pope Francis, apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, art. 153 §§ 1-2^[7]

This twofold mission — culture and education brought together under a single authority — is the most visible structural innovation of the 2022 reform: two institutions which, for decades, had existed separately within the Curia now find themselves attached to a single dicastery, with a common prefect but two autonomous sections, each led by its own secretary^[8].

Two sections, a single authority

The choice to keep two distinct sections, rather than fully merging the competences, reflects the Holy See's recognition of the specificity of each field: the Section for Culture addresses itself principally to the outside world — artists, researchers, cultural institutions, non-believers — while the Section for Education governs an institutional network internal to the Church — Catholic schools, pontifical universities, ecclesiastical faculties^[9]. The two sections nevertheless share the same prefect and the same vision: according to article 153 § 1, their common purpose is the integral development of the human person "in the following of Jesus Christ", whether it be the intellectual formation given in a Catholic school or the dialogue entered into with a non-believing artist in search of meaning^[10].

Before merging into a single dicastery, Catholic culture and education each had their own Roman history — one going back, through successive filiations, to the great reform of the Curia of 1588; the other, much more recent, born of the dialogue with unbelief opened by the Second Vatican Council.

The Congregation for Catholic Education, from 1588 to 2022

1588: Sixtus V and the short-lived congregation for the University of Rome

On 22 January 1588, Pope Sixtus V (Felice Peretti, 1585-1590) promulgated the apostolic constitution Immensa Aeterni Dei, which thoroughly reorganized the central government of the Church by instituting fifteen permanent cardinalatial congregations, nine for the government of the universal Church and six for the administration of the Papal States^[11]. Among these fifteen congregations figures, in tenth position, the Congregation for the University of Rome (Congregatio pro Universitate Studii Romani), composed of five cardinals and charged with presiding over studies and, in particular, over university reform^[12]. Its competence rapidly extended to all the universities of the Papal States as well as to the Roman colleges of the Greeks, the Maronites and the Neophytes^[13]. This first institution did not, however, survive the 17^th century: under the pontificate of Innocent XI (1676-1689), for want of new cardinals being appointed to replace deceased holders, it simply ceased to exist^[14]. There is therefore no direct institutional continuity between this Sixtine congregation and the modern institution; it remains nonetheless its distant historical precedent, and the first example of a permanent Roman organ dedicated to studies.

1814-1824: Pius VII, Leo XII and the birth of the Congregation of Studies

Two centuries later, it was a very different context — the restoration of the Papal States after the Napoleonic occupation — that gave rebirth to a Roman institution dedicated to studies. In 1814, barely returned to Rome, Pope Pius VII instituted a special commission of cardinals charged with reforming instruction in the Papal States, then, by a motu proprio of 6 July 1816, created a "Congregation for the establishment of the laws and regulations of the system of studies, universities and places of public instruction throughout the State"^[15]. This preparatory work culminated, under his successor, in the true founding act of the modern institutional lineage: on 28 August 1824, Pope Leo XII promulgated the apostolic constitution Quod Divina Sapientia, which reorganized on new foundations the whole of public instruction in the Papal States, placed universities and secondary schools under the direct supervision of a Congregation of Studies (Congregatio Studiorum) acting as a veritable pontifical ministry of public instruction, and abolished the old medieval university autonomies in favour of centralized management, including the choice of the titular professors of university chairs^[16].

1870-1908: from Rome to the universal Church

The loss of the Papal States in 1870 profoundly transformed the nature of the Congregation of Studies: having no territory of its own left to administer, it progressively extended its competence to Catholic universities and institutes throughout the world, well beyond Roman frontiers alone^[17]. The reform of the Roman Curia carried out by Saint Pius X with the constitution Sapienti Consilio of 29 June 1908 confirmed this henceforth universal mission, within the general reorganization which also affected, that same year, the future Congregation of the Council later become the Dicastery for the Clergy^[18].

1915: Benedict XV and the absorption of the seminaries

On 1 December 1915, Pope Benedict XV carried out a major reform: he withdrew competence over seminaries from the Consistorial Congregation and transferred it to the Congregation of Studies, which then took the name of Congregation of Seminaries and Universities of Studies (Congregatio de Seminariis et Studiorum Universitatibus)^[19]. Cardinal Gaetano Bisleti became its first prefect on the very day of the reform^[20]. Upon his death, on 30 August 1937, Pope Pius XI chose to reserve the prefecture of the congregation to himself personally, by a chirograph dated 3 September 1937 addressed to the Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli — the future Pius XII^[21]:

"To this end, after having prayed much and caused prayer to be made, and also to show once more how highly We esteem the importance of this Congregation for the life and government of the Church, We have decided to reserve to Ourselves, as of this day, its Prefecture." — Pope Pius XI, chirograph to Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, Secretary of State, 3 September 1937 (original Italian text quoted above in English translation; see footnote)^[22]

This exceptional situation — a reigning pope as prefect of a Roman congregation — lasted nearly two years, until the new pope Pius XII, elected in March 1939, appointed Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo to head the institution on 14 March 1939^[23]. Pizzardo would lead the congregation for nearly thirty years, until his retirement in 1968, at the age of ninety^[24].

1967-1988: from Paul VI to John Paul II

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council and of his own reform of the Curia, Pope Paul VI promulgated on 15 August 1967 the apostolic constitution Regimini Ecclesiae Universae, which renamed the institution the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, a name which refocused its mission on Catholic formation properly so called rather than on academic administration alone^[25]. Two decades later, Pope John Paul II, by the apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus of 28 June 1988, consolidated this denomination in the form "Congregation for Catholic Education (of Seminaries and Institutes of Studies)", confirming its twofold competence over the initial formation of the clergy and over all Catholic and ecclesiastical teaching institutions^[26].

2013: Benedict XVI withdraws the seminaries

On 16 January 2013, by the motu proprio Ministrorum Institutio, Pope Benedict XVI withdrew from the Congregation for Catholic Education responsibility for seminaries, transferred to the Dicastery for the Clergy in the name of pedagogical continuity between the initial and ongoing formation of priests^[27]. The congregation, henceforth refocused on Catholic schools and ecclesiastical universities and higher institutes of studies, kept this perimeter until its suppression in 2022.

The Pontifical Council for Culture, from 1965 to 2022

1965: Paul VI's Secretariat for Non-Believers

The history of the second founding body begins in the midst of a session of the Second Vatican Council. On 9 April 1965, Pope Paul VI created the Secretariat for Non-Believers (Secretariatus pro non credentibus), placed under the presidency of the Austrian Cardinal Franz König, Archbishop of Vienna^[28]. This creation answered a conviction expressed by Paul VI in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam (1964): the Church must enter into dialogue with the world according to three concentric circles — dialogue with separated Christian brethren, dialogue with believers of other religions, and dialogue with all men of good will who profess no religion^[29].

1982: John Paul II founds the Pontifical Council for Culture

On 20 May 1982, the feast of the Ascension and in the fourth year of his pontificate, John Paul II signed an autograph letter of foundation instituting the Pontifical Council for Culture (Pontificium Consilium de Cultura)^[30]. In it the Pope explained the meaning of this creation through a theological conviction that would become the most quoted formula of the entire magisterial corpus on culture:

"A faith which does not become culture is a faith which has not been fully received, not thoroughly thought through, not faithfully lived." — Saint John Paul II, address of 16 January 1982, quoted in the founding letter of the Pontifical Council for Culture, 20 May 1982^[31]

The letter specifies that "the synthesis between culture and faith is not only a requirement of culture but also of faith"^[32], taking up the orientations of the Second Vatican Council — in particular the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes — and of Paul VI's apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi on the evangelization of cultures^[33]. The new Council was assigned eight missions: bearing witness to the Holy See's constant interest in the world of culture, coordinating the action of the other dicasteries in this field, conducting dialogue with episcopal conferences, collaborating with international organizations — notably following the action of UNESCO — and facilitating encounters between the Church and contemporary cultural universes^[34].

1993: the absorption of the Secretariat for Non-Believers

Eleven years after its foundation, the Pontifical Council for Culture saw its field of competence considerably enlarged: in 1993, John Paul II attached to it the Secretariat for Non-Believers created in 1965, whose mission of dialogue with unbelief was henceforth integrated into the broader mission of dialogue between the Church and cultures — the underlying conviction being that culture constitutes the privileged terrain of this dialogue with those who profess no faith^[35].

2012: Benedict XVI integrates the Church's cultural heritage

A second internal merger took place under the pontificate of Benedict XVI: by the motu proprio Pulchritudinis Fidei of 30 July 2012, which entered into force the following 3 November, the Pope united to the Pontifical Council for Culture the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, created in 1988 by Pastor Bonus^[36]. It is from this 2012 merger that the Dicastery's current competence in the conservation of ecclesial archives, libraries, museums and artistic heritage directly derives, today inscribed in article 155 of Praedicate Evangelium^[37]. On 10 November 2012, that same year, the Pontifical Academy of Latinity (Pontificia Academia Latinitatis) was also created, placed under the Council's responsibility^[38].

Three presidents before the 2022 merger

From 1982 to 2022, the Pontifical Council for Culture knew only three presidents, against seven prefects for the Congregation for Catholic Education over a comparable period — a sign of the relative institutional youth of the cultural dicastery:

A reform willed by nine years of consultation

The apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, signed on 19 March 2022 on the solemnity of Saint Joseph and entered into force on 5 June 2022, the day of Pentecost, is the culmination of nine years of consultation by the Council of Cardinals — the "C9" — begun in the earliest days of Francis's pontificate^[39]. At the time of the reform, the two founding institutions were led by cardinals both close to or beyond the canonical retirement age: Gianfranco Ravasi for the Council for Culture, Giuseppe Versaldi for the Congregation for Catholic Education — a circumstance which eased the transition to the new unified structure^[40].

The choice to merge precisely culture and education — rather than, for example, attaching education to the Dicastery for Evangelization or culture to another organ — answers a theological intuition consistent with the one that had presided, forty years earlier, over the foundation of the Pontifical Council for Culture: Catholic education is itself an act of cultural transmission, and culture, reciprocally, cannot be conceived without foundational educational and pedagogical work. Article 153 § 1 formulates this unity of view by placing both sections under a single purpose: the development of human values "within the horizon of Christian anthropology"^[41].

The Section for Culture: dialogue, protection, promotion

Articles 154 to 158 of Praedicate Evangelium detail five axes of competence for the Section for Culture. The first, stated in article 154, is dialogue with the world of culture in the broadest sense:

"The Section for Culture promotes and supports relations between the Holy See and the world of culture, going out to meet the many bodies that come from it, and fostering dialogue in particular as the indispensable means of true encounter, mutual interaction and reciprocal enrichment, so that the various cultures may open themselves ever more to the Gospel and to the Christian faith, and that those engaged in the arts, letters and sciences, technology and sport may know and feel themselves recognized by the Church as being at the service of the sincere search for the true, the good and the beautiful." — Pope Francis, Praedicate Evangelium, art. 154^[42]

Article 155 entrusts the Section with a heritage-conservation mission: helping diocesan bishops, episcopal conferences and Eastern hierarchical structures to protect the Church's historical, documentary and artistic heritage — archives, libraries, museums, religious buildings — so that it may remain accessible to all who take an interest in it^[43]. Article 156 adds a dimension of mutual enrichment among the cultures present within the Church itself, by ensuring the promotion of local cultures and of their heritage of wisdom and spirituality^[44]. Article 157 authorizes the Section to take its own cultural initiatives, to follow the projects of the competent ecclesial institutions, and — in agreement with the Secretariat of State — to take part in international forums and specialized conferences on the enhancement of cultural heritage^[45]. Finally, article 158 institutionalizes the mission inherited from the 1965 Secretariat for Non-Believers: establishing initiatives of dialogue with those who, without professing any particular religion, sincerely seek to encounter the truth of God, and manifesting the Church's pastoral solicitude towards those who profess no belief^[46].

The Section for Education: schools, universities, nihil obstat

Articles 159 to 161 organize the Dicastery's educational competence. Article 159 charges the Section for Education with ensuring that the fundamental principles of Catholic education are received and deepened in every cultural context, and that the integrity of the faith is safeguarded in the doctrinal teaching of schools and higher institutes of studies^[47]. Article 160 entrusts it with establishing the norms for erecting Catholic schools of every order and level, as well as promoting the teaching of the Catholic religion in schools^[48].

Article 161, the most detailed of the ten articles of the section, lists six precise competences of the Section for Education in matters of higher education:

"It is competent for the formalities necessary for the recognition by States of the academic degrees conferred in the name of the Holy See. […] It is the competent authority for approving and erecting higher institutes of studies and other ecclesiastical academic institutions, for approving their statutes and overseeing their application, including where this touches on relations with civil authorities. […] It is competent to issue the nihil obstat necessary for teachers to be admitted to teach theological disciplines, according to article 72 § 2." — Pope Francis, Praedicate Evangelium, art. 161 §§ 2, 3 and 5^[49]

This competence over the nihil obstat of theology professors is exercised in close cooperation with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, alone empowered to pronounce on doctrinal content when a question of fidelity to the Magisterium arises — the precise mechanism of the nihil obstat and the imprimatur is the subject of a dedicated article in this encyclopedia. Article 161 § 6 finally adds a competence of collaboration with the other dicasteries for the academic formation of clerics, members of institutes of consecrated life and lay persons preparing for service to the Church^[50].

The seven pontifical academies

Article 162, the last article of the section, entrusts the Dicastery with coordinating seven pontifical academies, some of ancient foundation, in which international personalities of the theological and human sciences, believers or non-believers, are co-opted:

"The Dicastery for Culture and Education also coordinates the activity of certain pontifical academies […] These are currently: the Distinguished Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the Virtuosi al Pantheon; the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology; the Pontifical Academy of Theology; the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas; the International Pontifical Marian Academy; the Pontifical Academy Cultorum Martyrum; the Pontificia Academia Latinitatis." — Pope Francis, Praedicate Evangelium, art. 162^[51]

The oldest of these seven institutions, the Academy of the Virtuosi al Pantheon, goes back to the 16^th century; the most recent, the Pontifical Academy of Latinity, was only founded in 2012, under Benedict XVI^[52]. This heterogeneity of foundations — from the Renaissance to the 21^st century — illustrates the continuity of the Holy See's interest in learned disciplines, beyond successive institutional reorganizations.

Gaudium et Spes and openness to human cultures

Neither of the two institutional genealogies that lead to the present Dicastery can be understood without the theological foundation given to them by the Second Vatican Council. The pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (7 December 1965) devotes a whole chapter to "the development of culture" and affirms, at no. 58, the relationship at once close and non-exclusive between the Gospel and human cultures:

"At the same time, the Church, sent to all peoples of every time and place, is not bound in an exclusive and indissoluble manner to any race or nation, to any particular way of life, to any ancient or recent custom. Constantly faithful to her own tradition and at the same time conscious of the universality of her mission, she can enter into communion with various civilizations: whence the enrichment that results for herself and for the different cultures." — Second Vatican Council, pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, no. 58 § 3, 7 December 1965^[53]

This conciliar principle — a universal Church which identifies with no particular culture but dialogues with all — directly irrigates the mission assigned in 1982 to the Pontifical Council for Culture, then in 2022 to the Culture Section of the new Dicastery. It also underlies, by implication, the educational mission: a Catholic school only makes sense if it transmits a faith that has itself become culture, according to the formula of John Paul II quoted above^[54].

The Courtyard of the Gentiles, a living heritage of Benedict XVI

The most lasting initiative inherited from the Pontifical Council for Culture is the Courtyard of the Gentiles (Cortile dei Gentili), born of an intuition expressed by Benedict XVI in his address of wishes to the Roman Curia of 21 December 2009. Evoking the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, open to the pagans who wished to approach the one God without being able to enter the sanctuary itself, the Pope formulated an appeal that has remained famous:

"I think that today too the Church should open a sort of 'courtyard of the Gentiles', where men can in some way cling to God, without knowing him and before having found access to his mystery, at the service of which stands the inner life of the Church. To dialogue with religions must today above all be added dialogue with those for whom religion is something foreign, for whom God is unknown and who, nevertheless, would not wish simply to remain without God, but to approach him at least as the Unknown." — Pope Benedict XVI, address to the Roman Curia on the occasion of Christmas wishes, 21 December 2009^[55]

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, then president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, gave body to this intuition by launching the initiative in Paris, on 24 and 25 March 2011, in partnership with the Institut de France and UNESCO^[56].

The name chosen — the "courtyard" of the Gentiles, atrium gentium in Latin — designates the space of the Temple of Jerusalem which all could cross without distinction of culture, language or religion, a place of encounter and diversity^[57]. Since 2011, the Courtyard of the Gentiles has organized dozens of encounters between believers and non-believers in Italy and abroad, around the great contemporary questions; it is today carried by a foundation presided over by the Italian jurist Giuliano Amato, and remains one of the flagship initiatives attached to the Culture Section of the Dicastery^[58].

Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect-poet

Born on 15 December 1965 in Funchal, on the Portuguese island of Madeira, José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça was ordained a priest on 28 July 1990 for the diocese of Funchal, after a licentiate in theology obtained at the Catholic University of Portugal^[59]. He completed his biblical formation at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 1992, before defending a doctorate in biblical theology in 2004 in his home university, where he taught the New Testament and theological aesthetics from 2004 to 2018^[60]. Alongside his academic career, he established himself as one of the most original voices of contemporary Portuguese literature — poet, essayist and playwright, distinguished in June 2020 by the European "Helena Vaz da Silva" prize for his work in favour of beauty and poetry as European and world cultural heritage^[61].

In 2018, Pope Francis chose him as Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church; he received episcopal consecration on 28 July 2018, then preached the Roman Curia's Lenten retreat that same year^[62]. On 5 October 2019, Francis created him cardinal-deacon, assigning him the title of Santi Domenico e Sisto in Rome^[63]. On 26 September 2022, a few months after the entry into force of Praedicate Evangelium, he was appointed first prefect of the new Dicastery for Culture and Education, jointly succeeding Cardinals Ravasi and Versaldi^[64]. His singular path — biblicist, archivist, poet — makes him an emblematic figure of the synthesis between learned culture and spiritual life which the Dicastery is precisely charged with promoting.

Current structure and organization chart

According to the Dicastery's official pages, the leadership stands as follows, as of summer 2026^[65]:

Source: the Dicastery for Culture and Education's official "Struttura" and "Chi siamo" pages^[66].

Under-secretary Antonio Spadaro, an Italian Jesuit, led the journal La Civiltà Cattolica for nearly ten years before his appointment by Francis in September 2023, taking office on 1 January 2024^[67]. Archbishop Carlo Maria Polvani succeeds at the head of the Education Section Archbishop Giovanni Cesare Pagazzi, secretary since the Dicastery's foundation in 2022; Pagazzi was in turn appointed Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church on 28 March 2025, succeeding Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani — thus returning to the office once held by Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça himself, from 2018 to 2022^[68].

The Holy See's pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2024)

The most commented project of Tolentino de Mendonça's mandate remains, to this day, the Holy See's pavilion at the 60th Venice Art Biennale, in 2024. Entitled Con i miei occhi ("With my eyes"), the pavilion was installed, for the first time in the Biennale's history, inside the women's prison on the Giudecca itself, a former convent which once housed repentant prostitutes entrusted to the Church's care^[69]. Eight invited artists — Maurizio Cattelan, Claire Fontaine, Corita Kent, Bintou Dembélé, Simone Fattal, Sonia Gomes, Claire Tabouret and the couple Marco Perego and Zoe Saldana, counting as a single invitation — exhibited works born of direct encounter with women inmates serving life sentences^[70]. The pavilion's title, drawn from a poetic fragment echoing the book of Job — "now my eye sees you" (Jb 42:5) — and Shakespeare's sonnet 141, sums up the project's intention: to make visible, literally, with the eyes of those whom society no longer looks at^[71].

On 28 April 2024, Pope Francis visited the pavilion in person, becoming the first pontiff in history to attend the Venice Biennale^[72]. This gesture, exceptional for an institution more than twelve hundred years old, stands directly in the theological line fixed by John Paul II in 1982: going out to meet the world of art where it is found, including in its most unexpected margins, to bear witness there that no human life — even one locked behind bars — escapes the dignity conferred upon it by its relationship with God.

Catholic education in the world, in figures

The scale of the educational network for which the Section for Education is responsible can be measured by the statistics published each year by the Fides Agency on the occasion of World Mission Day. The 2025 report, based on data as of 31 December 2023, counts:

Source: Fides Agency, report "Missionary October — Statistics of the Catholic Church 2025", published on the occasion of the 99th World Day for Missions, 19 October 2025, data as of 31 December 2023^[73].

This table gives the measure of the real institutional network whose fundamental principles and Catholic identity the Section for Education supervises on behalf of the Holy See: more than 229,000 schools spread across five continents, and more than 7 million students in Catholic and Church-linked higher education, not counting the properly Roman ecclesiastical institutes of studies whose erection and statutes fall directly under article 161 of Praedicate Evangelium^[74].

Three clarifications usefully delimit the institution's exact perimeter. First, the Dicastery does not govern the formation of seminarians: this competence, withdrawn from the Congregation for Catholic Education in 2013 by Benedict XVI, has belonged since then to the Dicastery for the Clergy^[75]. Second, the Dicastery has no doctrinal authority of its own over the content of theological teaching: while it issues the administrative nihil obstat required of a theology teacher, it does so in cooperation with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, alone competent to judge the doctrinal fidelity of a teaching — the distinction between these two canonical instruments, the nihil obstat and the imprimatur, is the subject of a separate article in this encyclopedia. Finally, interreligious dialogue in the strict sense — with structured non-Christian religions, as opposed to dialogue with culture and unbelief — falls to another organ of the Curia, the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, with which the Dicastery for Culture and Education collaborates on occasion, notably on questions touching both fields simultaneously^[76].

• The Dicastery for the Clergy — the Roman institution which inherited, in 2013, responsibility for seminaries withdrawn from the Congregation for Catholic Education.
• Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — the body competent to judge the doctrinal fidelity of theological teaching, in cooperation with the Section for Education.
• The Dicastery for Evangelization — the neighbouring body whose work of new evangelization regularly intersects that of the Section for Culture.
• Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur — the canonical mechanism of doctrinal verification which the Section for Education applies to theology teachers.
• The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) — the council whose pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes founds the theology of dialogue between the Church and cultures.
• The Roman Curia — all the dicasteries, tribunals and offices through which the Pope governs the Catholic Church.