“Study geography: while learning the roads of the earth, you will come upon the path to Heaven.”

Saint Angela MERICI (1474-1540)
Foundress of the Ursulines

“What is “humanism”? It is a message of great friendship. It is the taste for what is truly human; the taste also, for an art which pulsates with this human blood and adds to it a body that will perish less easily. A passion of poetry, an understanding of nature, of wisdom, and of human grandeur. At times of crises, when the very continents tremble, do you not see what this understanding can do for men? This planet would have a hard time doing without this “Roman” virtue. There are peoples who invent – even though they are not necessarily the same ones who bring their inventions to perfection – one invents writing, one commerce; another geometry, the spirit of precision; another music, metaphysics. May the “Latinity” of these things bring to people not only a sense of balance and stability – but may it also be a reminder of the sense of grandeur which is key to understanding that peace is a thing from above. It is a thing full of light, full of respect for souls unfamiliar to man, full of man’s nobility; and it is a difficult thing, since it is a victory over the trivial and shallow attitudes for which difference engenders hatred. True humanism is universal; we call it “Latin” because a royal road winds its way from Virgil to Petrarch and to Ronsard. That is why we can say that all roads lead to Rome.”

Henri POURRAT (1887-1959)
Writer