Email from Rick Sanders
Pope Leo XIV introduces Nicolaus of Cusa
Helga Zepp-LaRouche Founder, Schiller Institute
November 10, 2025
In today’s world, which is challenged by the dangers of wars, geopolitical tensions, mass starvation, poverty and cultural crisis, one of the most important and uplifting interventions came from Pope Leo XIV in his Jubilee Audience on October 25, 2025 in St. Peter’s Square in front of tens of thousands of pilgrims. The Holy Father introduced Nicolaus of Cusa, the Cardinal and outstanding thinker of the 15th century, in his sermon as someone whose method of thinking enables man to see the hope of a better future and a way to find solutions to even the most difficult of problems. The Pope’s extended reference to Nicolaus of Cusa and this conception of the “coincidentia oppositorum,” the coincidence of opposites, is of the highest strategic importance, because it provides the key to always find a solution to any problem on a higher level than that on which the problem arose. Cusa developed in his “Docta Ignorantia” and other writings the argument that Man, as the “imago viva dei,” the living image of God, can always use his creative powers (“vis creativa”) to find the higher “One” which is of a higher power and magnitude than the “Many.” This way of thinking enables the human mind to think the one humanity first, before one thinks of the diversity, and in this way overcome otherwise seemingly unsolvable conflicts. The Pope explained that, in the troubled times of the fifteenth century, Nicolaus could not see the unity of the Church, nor the prospect of peace in an age where Christianity was threatened by external forces. But Nicolaus understood that “there are opposites that must be held together, that God is a mystery in which what is in tension finds unity…. What a great gift for the Church!” the Pope said. “What a call to the renewal of the heart!” From Nicolaus, he continued, the Church can learn to make space, to hold opposites together, to hope for what is not yet
seen.”
We want to bring this extremely important intervention by Pope Leo XIV to your attention, because it does provide a new approach to the challenges mentioned above. Going back decades, my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, the Schiller Institute and I always promoted this approach of Cusa’s, a point singled out by the American priest, Father Harry Bury, in recent remarks of great importance. The Schiller Institute would like to invite you to start a dialogue among representatives of the different religions, but also academics, think tanks, and generally people of goodwill, to apply Cusa’s method of the coincidence of opposites to the urgent problems of the present situation. Just as Nicolaus of Cusa was the most important intellectual influence for the Golden Renaissance of the 15th century, we can replicate his thinking and initiate a new renaissance for our world today.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Founder, Schiller Institute
Please read these 37 pages; consider them a Manual or Handbook for burying the last vestiges of Colonialism
https://schillerinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ReplicateCusas-Thinking-Revised-11-10.pdf?x67618&x67618