” “"A civilisation it’s the Pope’s opinion has rarely found such a great spirit, as would accommodate its values" and invent "ideas and forms which posterity would feed on, as Paul VI also highlighted". Born in Tagaste on 13th November 354 from Patritius, a pagan who then became a catechumen, and from Monica, "a fervent Christian". "A passionate woman, worshipped like a saint", his mother "had a very deep influence on her son and raised him in the Christian faith, which however the young man soon abandoned, as it also happens today with many young people", added the Pope, off the cuff. "Of a very lively intelligence", Augustine "received a good education" and acquired a "perfect command of the Latin language", even if "however he never acquired the same perfect command of the Greek language". In Carthage, Augustine read for the first time Cicero’s Hortensius, a book that has gone lost, which "stands at the beginning of his path to conversion", because "it awakened in him a love for wisdom", as he wrote, as a bishop, in his Confessions. "Even if he abandoned the ecclesial faith specified the Pope, off the cuff , Augustine always sought the truth. He believed that, without Jesus, the truth cannot be found", i.e. that the Hortensius "lacked Jesus’ Word". His encounter with the Bible, however, "disappointed the young Augustine, because he could not find in it the heights of philosophy" (continued)” “
