What Is Worth Building: The Commencement Speech by His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa
28 September 2026On the occasion of Bologna Business School’s 2026 Graduation, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa offered the graduates a reflection on what it means to build in a time marked by uncertainty.
It is an invitation to ask ourselves not only what is truly worth building, but also who we become as we build it. Below is the full text of his Commencement Speech, “What Is Worth Building.”
Dear graduates,
distinguished faculty, authorities, families and friends,
Thank you for inviting me to share this day with you. A graduation makes a story visible: the study, the hard work, the encounters, the trust of those who have walked beside us. Today that story opens onto new possibilities. It is a joy that this happens among people of different nationalities, who have learned together and who will carry what they have received to different places and circumstances. Today we celebrate an important achievement, one you have reached through dedication, and one that deserves to be recognized. But from this very achievement a question also arises, and it is with this question that I would like to begin my brief remarks: what do we wish to build with what we have learned?
Caring for the future
I come from Jerusalem. And when I think of the word “build,” which naturally accompanies a day like this, I also carry with me the images of what has been destroyed. I think of homes and lives shattered, of the suffering that runs across the whole of the Holy Land. Above all, I think of how much time it will take for trust to be rebuilt, along with the buildings.
A house can be rebuilt in the same place. But for it to become a home again, those who live in it must be able to believe that there will be a tomorrow, that their children will have a chance, that life will not be wiped out once more. Destruction reaches even this capacity to imagine. And its weight continues to bear down on people long after the noise of weapons has faded.
Within this reality, our community continues to look after schools, families, and people in need of care and work. These are ordinary activities, which take on a particular meaning when the conditions of life become precarious. Preparing a lesson, accompanying someone who is ill, helping a person start working again: all of this means recognizing that their life still deserves an investment of trust.
This is where the question I would like to share with you begins: what allows a person to keep caring for the future when there is no guarantee of one? It is a question that concerns us all, even if in very different forms.
Our living conditions are very different, we come from different worlds, and we have different personal stories. The uncertainty of someone beginning a professional path and that of someone trying to survive a war weigh in incomparable ways. And yet that question touches a shared condition: we must have the courage to choose without fully knowing the outcome of our choices. We can prepare ourselves seriously, anticipate, reduce some risks. But there remains a space that no expertise can entirely fill. And it is within that space that our responsibilities take shape.
I speak to you of Jerusalem because in its story we see reflected questions that concern every life. In that city, people of different nations, cultures and religions live side by side. Each carries a story, wishes to be recognized, fears losing what is dear. Each hopes to be able to offer a future to their children. And everyone has to reckon with the presence of others, with their expectations and their reasons.
In this sense, Jerusalem is a mirror of what we are living, a kind of paradigm of the dynamics that involve the whole world. The future of the world looks more and more like Jerusalem. It shows, with particular intensity, a challenge that increasingly belongs to all our societies: learning to live together among people with different traditions, faiths and visions of life. How do we safeguard our own identity while fully recognizing that of others? How do we build trust when differences frighten us?
These are questions you will meet too, in your work, in your relationships, and in the communities you will be part of. That is why speaking of Jerusalem also means asking ourselves about the world we will build together, and about the share of responsibility each of us can take on.
Building on truth
What, then, is worth building? I would like to start from the ground on which every human construction must rest: truth.
In the Holy Land I have learned how hard it is to acknowledge what challenges our own reasons. Our history and the pain we have lived through can make it difficult to recognize the suffering of others. Seeking the truth requires the freedom to change our judgment and to be corrected, even by those who have less authority than we do.
The complexity of the situation in the Holy Land does not allow for hasty judgments. We need to know the history, listen to people, and verify the facts. But this does not mean that all versions have the same worth. Responsibilities must be acknowledged, and injustices called by their name.
Truth also concerns our words. In our land, words like “peace,” “dialogue,” “dignity” have been repeated so many times while life seemed to contradict them. Trust wears away when what we say remains far from what we do. Restoring credibility to words requires promises kept and consistent conduct. It also requires accepting that someone may ask us to account for what we have said.
A future that is livable for others too
Our relationship with truth inevitably leads us to our relationship with others. In Jerusalem, this relationship is a daily, concrete reality. Languages, prayers and memories inhabit a small and extremely dense space. Each community guards something precious. The difficulty begins when love for what is our own becomes unable to recognize what belongs to others.
Our destinies are intertwined. In the Holy Land, no one can build a lasting future without taking the presence of the other into account. Israelis and Palestinians will continue to need a future in that land. The future of each people also depends on the security, freedom and dignity of the other.
This puts a demanding question to every project: in the future we imagine, who has a place?
This question concerns the quality of what we create. We can build something efficient, achieve results, expand our own opportunities, without ever asking how people will live inside what we have built. A human endeavor becomes livable when people can find in it a place, a dignity, a space in which to contribute who they are.
This is also where our relationship with power is measured. Power is not measured by what we can obtain for ourselves, but by the possibilities we open or close for others. Responsibility grows together with that capacity. And it meets a precise limit: a person keeps their worth even when they are of no use to us, when they slow our pace, when their reasons force us to rethink a plan. Recognizing this can come at a cost. And it is precisely then that we understand how real the respect we claim to have for human dignity truly is.
I think of our schools and social works, where people of different backgrounds share a common task. The relationship grows around something concrete: the education of a child, the care of a person. Getting to know one another takes time and repeated experiences. Through this familiarity, the other acquires a more precise face, and it becomes harder to confine them to a category.
The path you have shared in Bologna has also brought you into contact with people shaped by different stories and cultures. In an experience like this, collaboration requires more than knowing a common language. It requires understanding what a word means to the other person, what expectations it carries, where their difficulty begins. It is patient work, and it belongs to the building of every shared reality.
Work and the responsibility of a role
Work takes up an important part of our lives and helps give them shape. Through it we provide for our needs, test our abilities, and take part in a common endeavor. Even hard work acquires meaning when we can see what it is for, and for whom. A job in which we can express ourselves and grow is a human good that deserves to be protected.
In our land, helping a person to return to work also means giving back their autonomy, the ability to contribute to their family’s life, the confidence of still having something to offer. Work binds us to others and gives substance to our presence in the world. Its value is understood within the whole of life, which also needs affection, rest, and time that is freely given.
What, then, is expected of those who take on a role? Many of you will lead companies, projects, institutions. You will be asked to make decisions under uncertainty and under pressure. From those who take on a role, we expect first of all competence: that they know what has been entrusted to them and take it seriously. Then, sound judgment: that they know how to listen, choose a direction, and decide even when information is incomplete. And that they answer for their choices, explaining their reasons, examining their consequences, and correcting them when needed.
People also expect to be able to count on those who exercise responsibility: that they be present in difficult times, that their word carry weight, and that they make room for the contribution of others. This applies to me as well. Leading a community means holding together the direction of the journey and the concrete lives of people, allowing them to grow in freedom and responsibility.
A role, then, entrusts us with something that goes beyond our personal success. Its meaning is also measured by what it makes possible for others, and by what we will be able to leave to those who come after us.
The bonds that make us responsible
Let me return, then, to the opening question. What allows us to commit ourselves when the outcome remains uncertain? I can only answer from my own experience.
I have no guarantees about the future of the Holy Land. But I have bonds that make me co-responsible for it.
Those bonds have faces. They shape the story of the communities I belong to, of the people with whom I share worries and hopes. Their lives enter into my decisions. When I think about what can be done, I think of them as well. From this belonging comes a reason to go on, even in moments when I cannot see a solution.
It seems to me that here we touch something essential to every life. At some point, among the many things we could do, some become ours because we agree to answer for them. A relationship, a job, a work of any kind asks for time and faithfulness. Freedom takes a direction, and in doing so, it takes on bonds.
This can be frightening. To bind ourselves is to become vulnerable: what happens to a person, to a community, to something we believe in, can make us suffer. And yet it is precisely through those bonds that many things acquire value. The desire to keep every possibility open risks leaving life in suspense, as if the decisive choice could only be made once we are certain we will lose nothing.
In the things that matter, a certainty like that is rarely granted. Whoever begins a friendship, whoever educates, whoever undertakes something together with others, entrusts a part of themselves to a story that remains open. Joy, too, is born from this willingness: from the experience of being involved in something that deserves our time and that does not begin and end with us.
Recognizing the value of a bond also calls for intelligence and freedom. There are projects to correct, paths to abandon, decisions to rethink. Faithfulness to people may require us to profoundly change the way in which we have tried to serve them. We need to be able to distinguish what we are responsible for from our attachment to the solution we had imagined.
Hope within uncertainty
This is where I would place hope.
In my experience as a believer, it is born from a relationship with God and takes shape in closeness to people. I am sustained by the conviction that every person’s life has a value that no violence can erase. This conviction has very concrete consequences: a person who is suffering deserves care today; a child needs to learn today; a broken relationship may be waiting for us to make the first gesture.
I am speaking to people who come from different experiences: to those who have a religious faith and those who do not, to the graduates and to the families who have accompanied them here. The Christian faith guides the way I look at life. Others may find the reasons for their commitment in different convictions.
Yet we can recognize ourselves in some very concrete hopes that, without excluding those convictions, go beyond our respective affiliations and beliefs. Those who graduate today want to put what they have learned to good use and find their own way. Those who have stood by them over these years hope to see them build a good life, find work, be loved, and face difficulties without being left alone. Even when we imagine the future in different ways, these hopes can bring us closer.
From here arises a responsibility we can share. The respect, trust and opportunities we want for ourselves and for the people we love matter for others too. We can work together to make them accessible to more people. It is on this ground that I wish to meet you and share with you what I have learned in Jerusalem.
Hope is knowing that it is worth doing good, for anyone, beyond our respective affiliations, even when we do not know how things will turn out.
We do not know how things will go. But we do know that there are people who need us, today. What we can do for them has value, even when it is not enough to solve every problem. We can begin from here: from a concrete act of help, from a promise kept, from a chance offered to someone. This, too, is how we care for the future.
This trust calls us to examine our work seriously. The worth of an intention does not exempt us from asking what its effects are. Precisely because something matters to us, we want our commitment to truly serve it.
This journey also knows weariness. There are days when the reasons that sustain us become less visible. We need someone to safeguard them with us, to help us find them again. The experience of our community reminds me constantly of how much it matters to be supported: even those who are responsible for encouraging others live on the trust they receive.
Who we become as we build
One last question remains, perhaps the most important: as we try to build our future, who are we becoming?
Every decision leaves something within us. The way we use an opportunity, treat a person, or react to a contradiction slowly shapes our character. We grow used to a certain kind of language, to a certain measure of things. And those habits prepare the decisions that follow. The person we become is built also through what we come to consider normal.
In the Holy Land, this question touches, painfully, on the relationship between suffering and hatred. Violence can narrow the whole horizon, until we read every encounter through what we have suffered. Guarding our freedom also means telling the truth of a painful story without passing on hatred. One can mourn one’s own dead without wishing death on others. How hard this is, we understand when those dead have names and faces we know.
In the presence of those who have suffered violence, this possibility must be safeguarded with respect, accompanying their silences and their struggle as well. No one can decide from the outside how long that journey will take. But to keep believing that it is possible is to recognize in the person a freedom that the evil they have endured tries to take from them. It means wanting their future to remain open, while justice continues to demand truth and accountability.
In different circumstances, each of us meets pressures that can steer our choices: the need to be recognized, the fear of failure, the constant comparison with others. Noticing how much they weigh helps us understand where our freedom is heading. Success, too, when we entrust it with the task of telling us what we are worth, can make it hard to stop, to change course, to admit that we need help.
That is why life needs places where we can exist fully, even with what does not go well. Affection, friendship, the time of silence, the gratuitousness of an encounter safeguard this fullness. They remind us that our worth comes before the proof of our abilities. And they allow us to return to our responsibilities with greater freedom, because we know we can be loved even when we have no result to show.
Today we celebrate a preparation and the opening of new possibilities. The desire to achieve something, to give shape to your ideas, to contribute to our shared life deserves our trust. There are works waiting for intelligence and initiative, problems asking for solutions, possibilities that will become visible only when someone begins to work on them.
Coming from Jerusalem, I carry with me an awareness of the fragility of every construction. But I also carry the conviction that, within that fragility, our action has real value. A relationship that is cared for, a space where different people can meet, a possibility given back to someone who had lost it: these already change someone’s life. And from that life, things can be born that today we cannot imagine.
After these perhaps hurried reflections, I return to the opening question: what is worth building? I think of something that others can live from, in which they find room for their own freedom, and from which they can start anew. Something we will have tended with care, and that one day we will be able to entrust to hands other than our own.
This is one of the truest forms of hope: caring for a future that will belong to others as well, and beginning to make it livable from this very moment.
In the world that awaits you, there will be a need for people who can place their competence at the service of a more human life for everyone. I wish you, therefore, never to stop asking yourselves what is truly worth building.
Thank you.
