The Vatican's first vocational school offers training in sustainable horticulture, organic wine production and olive harvesting.
The Vatican has opened its largest education centre yet, inspired by Pope Francis's ecological legacy. It is an experiment in sustainable agriculture, vocational training and environmental education for children and business leaders alike, on the 22,257-hectare papal estate beside Lake Albano.
Pope Leo XIV, who has been a firm advocate of the need to care for God's creation stressed by his predecessor Pope Francis, officially opened the education centre on 5 September, returning to the place where he spent his first summer as pope.
Leo XIV visited the gardens, vineyards and farm at Castel Gandolfo and celebrated a liturgy for the staff who have been working since 2022 to put Francis's environmental teaching into practice.
Continuing Pope Francis's ecological legacy
On 2 September, officials offered a brief glimpse of the project – a large greenhouse whose shape curves and embraces like the colonnade of St Peter's Square. The greenhouse stands opposite a ten-room educational facility and dining hall.
Once the greenhouse is finished and up and running, groups of visitors will be able to come for an afternoon tour to learn about organic farming, or to take a week-long course in regenerative agriculture.
The project was inspired by Francis's 2015 encyclical "Laudato Si" (Praise Be), which treats care for the planet as an urgent and existentially moral question. It is inseparably bound up with questions of human dignity and justice, particularly where the poor are concerned.
Over the past 10 years, a grassroots movement has grown up within the church to carry forward that holistic message, running seminars and conferences and creating an education centre named after the encyclical - Borgo Laudato Si.
The centre aims to meet a range of environmental goals. Solar panels will supply all the energy the facility needs, plastic will be banned, and recycling and composting systems will be used to reach a "zero waste" target.
Vatican officials say water will be conserved and used to the full through "smart irrigation" systems that use artificial intelligence to determine what the plants need, along with rainwater harvesting and the installation of wastewater treatment and reuse systems.
The Vatican's first vocational school
The aim of the Vatican's first vocational school will be to provide on-site training in sustainable horticulture, organic wine production and olive harvesting. It will also offer new employment opportunities to particularly vulnerable groups, including victims of violence, refugees, recovering drug users and rehabilitated prisoners.
The produce will be sold on site and the profits reinvested in the education centre – there will be Laudato Si wine, organic olive oil, herbal teas from the farm garden and cheese made from the milk of the 60 cows raised on the farm.
The centre's director, Manuel Dorantes, stressed that the project is still in its early stages – there are as yet no dormitories or living quarters on site for visitors; it has already hosted a few pilot school groups and employs around a dozen workers who have completed the first vocational training course. "Pope Francis wanted to say that if we, the smallest city state in the world, can do this, then countries that are larger than us and have more resources have considerably greater potential," said Dorantes.
Officials declined to discuss how the project is being funded. It was stated that a number of partners, whose number is not being disclosed, have invested in the project, and that confidential business plans prevent the Vatican from making further details public.