Global Education Pact

instrumentalising children as agents of change

by MARIA MADISE

On 14 May 2020, representatives of various world religions, international organisations and humanitarian institutions, as well as prominent academic, economic, political and cultural figures will gather in the Vatican to sign the manifesto of the “Global Compact on Education”. Each representative will then undertake to implement and promote the Compact in their own sphere of influence. In launching this initiative Pope Francis calls everyone “to create a global change of mentality through education” and to forge a “new humanism”.1

“Every change,” the Pope said, “calls for an educational process that involves everyone”. Referring to the African proverb “it takes a whole village to educate a child”, the Pope explained that “there is thus a need to create an ‘educational village’, in which all people, according to their respective roles, share the task of forming a network of open, human relationships.”2

Although the details remain obscure, with each statement the Vatican makes about the Global Compact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that it will represent a radical break with the Church’s understanding of education as exemplified by Pius XI's 1929 encyclical Divini illius magistri. There is no indication that the Compact will be concerned with teaching children to know, love and serve God in this world and to be with Him forever in the next. Instead, it seeks to utilise children as agents of global change. While instrumentalising children in this way is objectionable in itself, the partners the Vatican is considering for this initiative make it even more disturbing. Here is what we know so far about Pope Francis’ Global Compact on Education.

WHO IS INVOLVED? The Pope has tasked the Congregation for Catholic Education, a Ministry of the Holy See, which oversees 216,000 Catholic schools with 60 million pupils and 1,750 Catholic universities, with over 11 million students, to co-ordinate and organise the initiative.

In an interview with Diane Montagna for LifeSiteNews, Archbishop Vincenzo Zani, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, said that “a group of experts” has been working on the manifesto for over a year and that “it has already been well prepared”.3 In the interview, he did not agree to say more about the “experts” than that they come “from various disciplines, of various sensibilities, of various points of view because education is not only a matter of pedagogy in the strict sense.” The Archbishop admitted that the group comprises of representatives of different religions.

At a meeting entitled “Education. The Global Compact”, held at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) on 6-7 February, at the request of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the special advisor to Pope Francis who also played a central role in drafting the UN’s anti-life and anti-family Sustainable Development Goals, introduced his proposals for partners of the Compact to raise a projected $26 billion annual budget for the implementation of the initiative. Diane Montagna reported on LifeSiteNews that his proposals for the “Partners for the Global Pact for Education and a New Fund for Education” include:4

• Donor governments • European Union • Billionaire philanthropists (Bill Gates, USA;

Jack Ma, China; and Mukesh Ambani, India) • Islamic Development Bank • UNESCO, UNICEF and other UN Agencies • International Monetary Fund • UN Secretary General’s SGD Advocates • Global Citizens NGO • Youth for the Future

European Union The EU’s network of agencies is a major promoter of birth control and gender ideology. World Health Organisation (WHO)/Europe identifies the EU as its “natural partner”.5 It states that “where contraception is available and affordable, abortion should rarely be necessary; when it is necessary, however, it should be accessible and safe”.6 WHO/Europe places contraception and the “right to choose when to have children” at the centre of reproductive health. It further states that achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) which is included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the 2030 Agenda is an “unfinished agenda”.7

The EU’s Youth Strategy, a framework for its youth policy cooperation for 2019-2027, consists of 11 European Youth Goals, including “equality for all genders”: that is, equal opportunities and access to rights need to be ensured for young people of all genders including non-binary and LGBTQI+ young people by, for example, eliminating “stereotypical gender roles” and embracing “diverse gender identities in education systems, family life, the workplace, and other areas of life”.8

Billionaire philanthropists Diane Montagna reported that Sachs claimed to have “recently” spoken with American, Chinese, and Indian billionaires Bill Gates, Jack Ma, and Mukesh Ambani about the project and had visited the Islamic Development Bank.9 She pointed out that Sachs’s announcement of Gates’ potential role as a funding partner for the Education Compact coincided with the release of an annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on 10 February, announcing that “the climate crisis and gender equality” have emerged as priorities for their future philanthropic giving.10 Melinda Gates states in the letter that she wants to focus efforts particularly on gender equality, including “reproductive rights”. “My journey as a public advocate began with family planning,” she writes. “There are over 200 million women in developing countries who do not want to get pregnant but are not using modern contraceptives.” Since then, she said her foundation, which works closely with Jeffrey Sachs, has stepped up “our commitments to family planning” while also developing “strategies that prioritise gender equality”11.

UNESCO, UNICEF, etc. UN agencies have a long track record in promoting birth control and anti-life, anti-family sex education. In January 2018, UNESCO published new technical guidance on “Comprehensive Sexuality Education”,12 despite the objections of UN member states. This guidance aims to promote a global standard for governments, educators, and sexual and reproductive

“Although some of the seventeen UN Goals may seem laudable, the decision to throw the weight of the Catholic Church behind the narrative of a global crisis requiring global solutions has lent her moral authority to the structures used to promote policies and practices which are antithetical to the teachings of Christ and destructive of innocent human life on a genocidal scale.”

health advocates. Stefano Gennarini of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) pointed out that the guidelines recommend helping children as young as five to identify “trusted adults” other than their parents to “help them understand themselves, their feelings and their bodies”. It proposes teaching children from the age of five that gender is a social construct and, from the age of nine, teaching them to “appreciate their own gender identity and demonstrate respect for the gender identity of others”.

These objectives also include telling children about various types of “non-traditional families” and have a heavy emphasis on LGBTI “rights”. The guidelines advise children how to “negotiate” and “be assertive” with a romantic partner, how to “communicate and understand different sexual feelings” and, from the age of nine, that masturbation is not harmful and must be done in private.13

A few months later, C-Fam reported that the UN children’s agency UNICEF has also signed onto the “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education”, and is therefore endorsing a document that calls for children to be able to “describe male and female responses to sexual stimulation”, “summarize key elements of sexual pleasure”, and mocks the idea of abstinence and delaying sexual activity until marriage. According to UNICEF, abstinence means “deciding when to start having sex and with whom” and it is a “condition” that can be “harmful to young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights”. UNICEF also suggests that five-year-olds should “reflect on how they feel about their biological sex and gender”.14

These are just a few disturbing examples of the activities and projects in conflict with the Church’s teaching that the proposed partners for the Global Education Pact potentially reaching to tens of millions of children are engaged in.

In the past years, that causal link between birth control and education has also been explored at events held in the Vatican. At the conference on Biological Extinction in 2017, Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Social Sciences expressed the view that “we know some part but not all of the doctrine of the Church” about fertility and procreation. He went on record by saying: “And the many, many priests say to me that the great solution for the question of procreation is the education of women. Because when you have education, we don’t have children. We don’t have seven children. Maybe we have one children [sic], two children. No more.”15

At the invitation of Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo, many birth control proponents have spoken at the Vatican, including Dr. Jeffrey Sachs who has been a regular guest at the PAS conferences. Sachs has been a vocal advocate for reducing the birth rate of Africa. In his book The Age of Sustainable Development, published in March 2015, Sachs called for governments to encourage their populations to lower family size by promoting birth control and providing access to free or low-cost contraception and family planning.16 In 2011 he called for the Nigerian government “to work towards attaining a maximum of three children [per family].17 His 2008 book, Commonwealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, argued that abortion was a cost-effective way to eliminate “unwanted children” and reduce a country’s total fertility rates “by as much as half a child on average.”18 Dr. Sachs has given around twenty-five talks in the Vatican during the current pontificate. Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of

Sciences, has justified the role increasingly played by Sachs in Holy See events by insisting that Sachs does not express his pro-abortion opinions on these occasions.19

THE UN SDGS AND THE 2030 AGENDA Most of the proposed partners for the Global Compact on Education are heavily involved in promoting the UN 2030 Agenda. On 25 September 2015, Pope Francis unequivocally endorsed the UN Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the 2030 Agenda. At the time of its adoption, pro-life leaders objected to the stated targets for Goal 3 and Goal 5 which call for universal access to reproductive health services by 2030. Such terms are widely recognised as euphemisms for abortion and birth control.

Although some of the seventeen Goals may seem laudable, if utopian – such as eradicating poverty and hunger, ensuring good health and education for everyone, everywhere by 2030 – the decision to throw the weight of the Catholic Church behind the narrative of a global crisis requiring global solutions has lent her moral authority to the structures used to promote policies and practices which are antithetical to the teachings of Christ and destructive of innocent human life on a genocidal scale. The UN does not need the Church to explicitly promote its reproductive health strategy. As long as Church leaders approve the overall agenda, others will happily implement it to meet its practical targets. In September 2019, during an inflight press conference on his return from an apostolic visit to Africa, Pope Francis said that it is our “duty” to “obey international institutions”, such as the United Nations and the European Union.20

Pope Francis has also promoted school-based sex education. During a flight to Rome from Panama, last January, Pope Francis told reporters that bishops did not know what to do about the clerical sex abuse scandal. He said: “We felt the responsibility to give […] catechesis on this problem to the bishops’ conferences”. Significantly, the Pope went on to say: “I believe that we must provide sex education in schools”.21

The prospective partners of the Global Compact on Education have demonstrated very clearly what they envisage should be taught to the children in school sex education curriculum. And at least in the case of UNESCO, they believe, their idea of comprehensive sexuality education should be made mandatory in schools, and support for education programmes be conditioned on compliance with their guidance.

Instrumentalising children as the “agents of change” to implement the SDGs is also a familiar theme for the pontifical institutions. Already in November 2015, shortly after the adoption of the UN 2030 Agenda, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held a workshop to discuss how to use children as “agents of change” to implement environmentalism and “sustainable development”.22 The briefing document for this event said that schools would have to “absorb” the Sustainable Development Goals, the same Sustainable Development Goals that include calls for universal access to “reproductive health”. The briefing warned against “parents” and “agencies” that “basing themselves on religious principles, oppose scientific evidence to the detriment of children”.

INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS The Instrumentum laboris for the Global Compact on Education is an 18-page document consisting of four sections entitled “the project”, “the context”, “the vision” and “the mission”. In the now-familiar style of recent Vatican documents, it proposes a perpetual journey with ongoing discussions which are not intended to reach a destination or find an answer:

“Following what various religious leaders suggested to Pope Francis, it is necessary to focus today on

educating the questions of our youth, which are a priority compared to providing answers: it is a matter of dedicating time and space to the development of the great questions and wishes that dwell into the hearts of new generations, who from a serene relationship with themselves might fulfil the search for the transcendent.”23

In a world which is increasingly divided between societies which see Catholicism as incompatible with militant secularism and those which are violently hostile to all Christianity, it is difficult to imagine how such an approach could support parents, teachers or catechists struggling to educate children in the faith. Since this does not seem to be the aim of the initiative, the inevitable question arises, what is its purpose? Is the Compact on Education intended to establish a global structure through which any chosen message could be propagated?

The project In the first part, the document focuses on the need to build peace and overcome conflicts through education. Developing the ideas Pope Francis has already expressed in Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si, “respecting diversity” is identified as the first premise of the new educational covenant, while the idea of a “global village of education” is presented as putting “the human person at the center” and investing “creatively and responsibly in long-term projects” that “train individuals willing to offer themselves in service to the community”.

The context The second part of the document points out that “psychological disaggregation”, mostly due to the pervasiveness of new technologies, is singled out by the Pope in his Message for the Launch of the Global Compact on Education as one of the most urgent educational issues. “The time and space that youths need, to become familiar with their wishes and fears”, are increasingly filled with continuous stimuli and digital interactions.

This is certainly true. However, on this subject, the Instrumentum laboris refers to the syncretist spirituality of the Document on the Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together (the Abu Dhabi declaration) which speaks of “awakening religious awareness and the need to revive this awareness in the hearts of new generations”. It goes on to explain that:

“for believers, it is a matter of awakening in young people, with appropriate timing, the wish to delve into their inner being to know and love God, for nonbelievers to animate a stimulating restlessness about the meaning of things and of their own existence.”

The “context” part of the document also presents the perceived difficulties for our educational action today, which, according to the authors of the Instrumentum laboris, include egolatry, the rift between generations, social inequality, the digital world altering relationships, and fragmented identities and environmental crisis presenting further challenges.

The vision and mission The third part elaborates the theme of fraternity and embracing differences:

“For as long as diversity and difference are considered hostile to unity, war will always be on our doorstep, ready to break out in all its destructive power. Hence, the first indispensable step to build a new humanism is to educate people to a new thought, that can reconcile unity and diversity, equality and freedom, identity and otherness.”

Throughout the working document runs “a vision” of “an integral and inclusive education, that is able to engage in patient listening and constructive dialogue”; “an educational vision that can encompass a broad range of life experiences and learning processes”. It is a vision which emphasises social relationships and living together, setting up as an educational goal of making children and young people “who are capable of living in the society and for the society”. Quoting Pope Francis’s message for the World Day of Peace (January 1, 2014), entitled “Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace”, it is implied that human relationships even have “salvific” faculties: “We have been created not only to live ‘with others’, but also to live ‘at the service of others’, in a salvific and enriching reciprocity.” The Instrumentum laboris adds: “‘Together’ is the word that saves and achieves everything.”

Overall, the document presents a vision of global community, that does not depend on God or His grace, but instead holds out the promise of worldly redemption from a society, whose members may, according to their belief system, take an interest in the transcendent or they may not – it really doesn’t matter. The value of sharing a good life “together” on earth takes priority over the sacrifices required for eternal life in Heaven.

In this vision, the content of learning seems to have little or no importance. The Instrumentum laboris tells us that the Pope “does not suggest an educational action, nor does he invite us to develop a program”. Speaking of Pope Francis’s invitation to us “to look for travelling companions on the path of education, rather than suggesting programs to follow”, it seems to confirm that an agreement to work together is unrelated to the subject of our studies or what we aim to achieve: “to establish a covenant among all those who value the uniqueness of each individual through a continuous commitment to formation” – irrespective of what this formation involves. We are also informed that “the choice of words reveals much about the style with which the Pope invites us to undertake this task: for there to be a compact, in fact, there must be two or more people who choose to commit to a common cause. A compact implies choosing to put our strengths at the service of the same project, albeit maintaining our mutual differences. (Post-synodal apostolic exhortation Christus vivit, no.165).”

As one of the “indispensable values to rebuild an educational covenant”, the Instrumentum laboris suggests “the value of the educational relationship”. In the words of Pope Francis, the authors of the Instrumentum laboris reiterate that “while not forgetting that young people look to the words and example of adults, we should also be well aware that they themselves have much to offer, thanks to their enthusiasm and commitment.” This approach seems similar to that denounced as “false” and “unsound” in Pope Pius XI encyclical Divini Illius Magistri on education, where we read:

“Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a pretended self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher's authority and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or divine, in the work of his education.” (no.60)

The Instrumentum laboris also quotes Pope Francis saying that young people have a “thirst for truth, which constantly reminds us of the fact that hope is not utopian and that peace is always a good that can be attained”. Perhaps referring to the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, the Pope, when addressing the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See in January 2020, acknowledged the example of many young people who “have become active in calling the attention of political leaders to the issue of climate change. Care for our common home ought to be a concern of everyone and not the object of ideological conflict between different views of reality or, much less, between generations.”

The only acknowledgement of the role of parents in educating their children is given in a quote from Benedict XVI when they are listed along with teachers and priests as “everyone who have direct educational responsibilities”. There is no mention of fathers or mothers in the document. A quote from Pope Francis acknowledges that “[e]ducation is not limited to school and university classrooms; it is principally ensured by strengthening and reinforcing the primary right of the family to educate, and the right of Churches and social communities to support and assist families in raising their children”. However, the projected $26 billion annual budget for the implementation of the Global Compact does not seem to be intended to provide support for actual families but for institutions.

The mental somersaults performed by the authors of the Instrumentum laboris are surely unparalleled in the history of the Church’s pronouncements on education. We are, for example, exhorted to a “healthy risk-taking” and daring to be restless, exiting from ourselves, which entails “running the risk” of a “faceto-face encounter with others”, “with their physical presence which challenges us”, “with their pain and their pleas”, “with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction”. We are told that “only in this way will passion recover its momentum and become the protagonist of our existence, educating us to conscious and responsible lifestyles”.

At the end of the working document, after being entrusted with “the mission” to respond to the threefold “courage” of “placing the human person at the centre”, “capitalising our best energies” and “placing ourselves at the service of the society”, we are offered “suggested themes for further reflections”, including: “Mystique” of living together; Village of Education; Fraternity and peace; Egolatry; Positive Internet resources; Education to silence; Throwaway culture; Thoughts of unity; Restlessness in searching; Revolution of tenderness; Ecological Citizenship. These rather enigmatic phrases can only give us an indication of the goals set for the Education Compact. Sadly, however, we can see that they are non-doctrinal, non-Christian and wholly unhelpful for Catholic parents struggling to bring up their children in the faith.

NEW HUMANISM AND AUTHENTIC EDUCATION One of the most unsettling aspects of the Global Compact on Education is the ambiguous concept of “new humanism”. Asked by Diane Montagna about this term, Archbishop Vincenzo Zani, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, pointed to Michaelangelo’s creation of Adam.

“In this depiction of the Creation, we see God who gives man strength, liberty, and life but leaves him free. It is an encounter of freedom where there is a presence of God that does not crush man, but frees him. He launches him in his responsibility. Here we have two very important concepts. The Christian idea is that of Creation, and it is not only Christian. The idea belongs to the three monotheistic religions. Therefore, that is the very important root. The rest comes from it. It’s the centrality of the person. God creates but then withdraws. He leaves man, saying, “Go!”24

The Archbishop seems to wish to soften this deistic view by going on to explain:

“God does not withdraw. He is there, but he doesn’t want to replace man. And so, in the moment of Creation – this is particularly Christian because Christianity has its own specific vision – at a certain point, God sees man disoriented, and he sends his Son – the Incarnation. At this point, then, we

THE CREATION OF ADAM, DETAIL, (C.1508), MICHELANGELO, SISTINE CHAPEL, VATICAN.

find the specifically Christian dimension, where God himself becomes nothing in order to elevate humanity. This is the new humanism. This is the new humanism; that is, it is the humanism that gets back on its feet, resumes the journey of relationship to God, doesn’t cut off this relationship, but strengthens it, and especially – since man is made in the image and likeness of God — this impression of God in the soul of man has to be understood and developed.”

However, such an explanation of “new humanism” seems designed to provide a theoretical platform on which the socio-ecological vision of education can be presented to people of all faiths and none. It deforms the sacred duty of Christian parents and educators of raising citizens for Heaven into a naturalistic anthropocentric approach, which is non-dogmatic and is therefore not Catholic.

In his encyclical on Christian education (Divini Illius Magistri, 1929) Pope Pius XI instructs the faithful to “make no mistake in education, as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected.”

“In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that

there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His Only Begotten Son, who alone is ‘the way, the truth and the life’, there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education.” (no. 7)

Discussing the essential aspects of authentic education, Pius XI explains that the mission to educate belongs pre-eminently to the Church. “[H]er mission to educate extends equally to those outside the Fold, seeing that all men are called to enter the kingdom of God and reach eternal salvation.” (no. 26) The Church’s mission of education is in “wonderful agreement with that of the family, for both proceed from God, and in a remarkably similar manner”. “God directly communicates to the family, in the natural order, fecundity, which is the principle of life, and hence also the principle of education to life, together with authority, the principle of order.” (no. 30)

He continues:

“The family therefore holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.” (no. 32)

The wisdom of the Church in this matter is expressed in Canon Law, can. 1113:

“Parents are under a grave obligation to see to the religious and moral education of their children, as well as to their physical and civic training, as far as they can, and moreover to provide for their temporal well-being.”

Through education an individual should establish a solid foundation to form oneself, one’s family, society and all creation in the spirit of Truth. Authentic education assists us to grow in virtues and form the correct hierarchy of values, where material values serve the spiritual, and temporal values serve the eternal. CONCLUSION The pontificate of Pope Francis is characterised by dramatic departures from the teaching of the popes who have gone before him. Sadly, there is no reason to expect that the Global Compact on Education will prove to be an exception to this pattern. Rather, in the Marxist undertones of its emphasis on collectiveness and social good, it resembles more the protagonists of socialism than the fathers of the Church.

Addressing the plenary session of the Congregation of Catholic Education on 20 February, Pope Francis himself said that “the educational pact must not be a simple order, it must not be a rehash of the positivisms we have received from an Enlightenment education. It must be revolutionary.”25

The desire of the globalist powers within the UN to gain access to the Church’s 216,000 schools, attended by over 60 million pupils and 1,750 universities, with over 11 million students is easy to understand. An education system devoid of a Christian ethos has always been the preferred means of spreading secular political ideologies. For them, all education is political. Throughout history, the Church has steadfastly resisted their attempts to win her over. But with Pope Francis’s global education initiative she now seems poised to trade true knowledge of the living God for the empty promise of dialogue and fraternity with the world.

In Divini Illius Magistri, Pope Pius XI highlights the dangers of naturalist education stripped of the truth of the gospel. Those who claim to liberate children, he argues, would really make them slaves to sin. In particular, he warns us of the threat such education poses to innocence and holy purity saying:

“Far too common is the error of those who with dangerous assurance and under an ugly term propagate a so-called sex-education, falsely imagining they can forearm youths against the dangers of sensuality by means purely natural, such as a foolhardy initiation and precautionary instruction for all indiscriminately, even in public; and, worse still, by exposing them at an early age to the occasions, in order to accustom them, so it is argued, and as it were to harden them against such dangers. (no. 65)

“Such persons grievously err in refusing to recognise the inborn weakness of human nature, and the law of which the Apostle speaks, fighting against the law of the mind; and also in ignoring the experience of facts, from which it is clear that, particularly in young people, evil practices are the effect not so much of ignorance of intellect as of weakness of a will exposed to dangerous occasions, and unsupported by the means of grace.” (no. 66)

So we could conclude that any meaningful educational work ought to prepare a person “whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural, such as right reason and revelation show him to be”26 to live a fruitful and purposeful life directed towards serving God and neighbour, with the ultimate goal of eternal life in Heaven.

The question remains – how are children to be educated in a society where hedonism and a blatant disregard of Christian standards have become the norm; where fewer and fewer of them grow up in intact families, where birth rates have fallen below replacement levels, where substance abuse and school violence continually rise while every area of modern life has been sexualised? In a world where Christian parenthood is marked by a daily struggle to safeguard their children from the poison which has engulfed so large a portion of the world, the Vatican’s pact with so many of those responsible for spreading that poison represents a betrayal on a global scale.

ENDNOTES:

1. Global Compact on Education, https://www.educationglobalcompact.org/en/ global-compact-on-education/ 2. Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the Launch of the Global Compact on Education, Vatican, 12 September 2019, https://www.educationglobalcompact. org/en/the-invite-of-pope-francis/ 3. Diane Montagna, “Vatican Abp organizing Global Education Pact touts pope’s ‘new humanism’ where God ‘withdraws’”, LifeSiteNews, 25 February 2020, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archbishop-organizing-vatican-education-pact-touts-popes-new-humanism 4. Diane Montagna, “Vatican urged to partner with top population controllers on pope’s Global Education Pact”, LifeSiteNews, 14 February 2020, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-urged-to-partner-with-top-population-controllers-on-popes-global- education-pact 5. World Health Organisation, Regional Office for Europe, http://www.euro.who.int/ en/about-us/partners/the-european-union-and-its-institutions 6. WHO/Europe, Areas of Work, http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/ Life-stages/sexual-and-reproductive-health/areas-of-work/abortion 7. WHO/Europe, Areas of Work, http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/ Life-stages/sexual-and-reproductive-health/areas-of-work/contraception 8. European Union Youth Goals, https://ec.europa.eu/youth/policy/youth-strategy/ youthgoals_en 9. Diane Montagna, “Vatican urged to partner with top population controllers on pope’s Global Education Pact”, LifeSiteNews, 14 February 2020, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-urged-to-partner-with-top-population-controllers-on-popes-global- education-pact 10. Thomas D. Williams, “Gates Foundation to Target Climate Change, Gender Inequality”, Breitbart, 10 February 2020, https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2020/02/10/gates-foundation-to-target-climate-change-gender-inequality/ 11. Bill and Melinda Gates, “Why we swing for the fences”, 10 February 2020, https://www.gatesnotes.com/2020-Annual-Letter 12. International technical guidance on sexuality education, UNESCO, 2018, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260770/PDF/260770eng.pdf. multi 13. Stefano Gennarini, “UN Agency Defies General Assembly, Promotes ‘Comprehensive Sexuality Education’”, Center for Family and Human Rights, 19 January 2018, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/un-agency-defies-general-assembly-promotes-comprehensive-sexuality-education-part-1/ 14. Austin Ruse, “Christians Protest UNICEF for ‘Sexualizing’ Children”, Center for Family and Human Rights, 20 March 2018, https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/christians-protest-unicef-sexualizing-children/ 15. Claire Chretien, “Vatican bishop: ‘We don’t know exactly’ what the Church teaches on procreation; ‘education’ will help women have one kid instead of seven”, LifeSiteNews, 9 March 2017, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/catholic-bishopto-population-controller-we-dont-know-exactly-what-the-chur 16. Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Sustainable Development, Kindle Edition, (2015), p. 159. 17. “Nigeria population: Sachs’ three-baby plan ‘tricky’”, British Broadcasting Corporation, 24 May 2011; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13530649 18. Jeffrey Sachs, Commonwealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Kindle Edition (2011), pp. 189-90. 19. Diane Montagna, “Speaker tells Vatican conference: Reducing population is best solution to climate ‘crisis’”, LifeSiteNews, 16 November 2017, https://www. lifesitenews.com/news/speaker-tells-vatican-conference-reducing-population-is-best-solution-to-cl 20. Pope Francis’ in-flight press conference: full text, Vatican News, 10 September 2019; https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-09/pope-francis-inflight-press-conference-full-text.html 21. Diane Montagna, “Pope Francis: ‘We must provide sex education in schools’”, LifeSiteNews, 28 January 2019, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-franciswe-must-provide-sex-education-in-schools 22. Children and Sustainable Development: A Challenge for Education, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 13-15 November 2015, http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/events/2015/children.html 23. Global Compact on education, Instrumentum laboris, https://www.lifesitenews. com/news/pope-francis-we-must-provide-sex-education-in-schools 24. Diane Montagna, “Vatican Abp organizing Global Education Pact touts pope’s ‘new humanism’ where God ‘withdraws’”, LifeSiteNews, 25 February 2020, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archbishop-organizing-vatican-education-pact-touts-popes-new-humanism 25. Courtney Mares, “Pope Francis urges Catholic educators to teach inclusive integral ecology”, Catholic News Agency, 20 February 2020, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-urges-catholic-educators-to-teach-inclusive-integral-ecology-94448 26. Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (no. 53), 31 December 1929, http://w2.vatican. va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_divini-illius-magistri.html