George Clooney, Richard Gere, Salma Hayek honored by Pope Francis

Top Hollywood celebrities George Clooney, Richard Gere and Salma Hayek were honored by no other than Pope Francis on Sunday, May 29 at the Vatican during a conference promoting an Argentine education initiative.

According to the Catholic News Agency, the celebrities were given the Olive Medal of Peace at Paul VI's Synod Hall presented by the event's organizers, the Scholas Occurentes.

"Important values can be transmitted by celebrities," Lorena Bianchetti, one of the organizers, was quoted by Reuters as speaking at the event.

Bianchetti also announced that Clooney, Gere and Hayek have already agreed to be ambassadors for an art project of Scholas Occurentes.

The foundation, founded in the pope's home country of Argentina, translates to "schools that meet." On its website, the foundation defines its work as using "technology with arts and sports in order to promote social integration and the culture of encounter for peace." Its mission is geared toward "integration of communities, with special focus on the poorer ones" and claims it "works with all kinds of schools, both public and private, and of all religious affiliations." They are now operating in 190 countries with more than 430,000 schools and has headquarters in the Vatican City, Argentina, Spain, Paraguay and Mozambique.

Francis also reminded the celebrities to "help the world recover the language of gestures" while praising the event's gesture of bridging a world that the pope defined as cruel.

"To build a new world, a better world, we must banish all kinds of cruelty. And war is cruel," said the pope.

He also encouraged smiling, making eye-contact, and traits such as patience and tolerance as positive gestures while denouncing bullying as an "aggression that hides a deep cruelty."

"I can not love him more," Hayek wrote on her Instagram account after meeting the pope.