Principal News
Italy Pilgrimage
Ciao
What a 10 days in Italy I had. It was highlighted by the opportunity to be present and receive a blessing from Pope Leo at Domus Australia, where he was blessing an icon of St Mary of the Rosary. This was with 120 other people, which was an amazing intimate encounter with the Pope. A video about the visit is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cjFQ3om8xc I was able to have medals for all of our students blessed by Pope Leo and they will be given to each child. Whether you are Catholic or not, I hope this medal can be something you can take and see that we are truly one community, part of the global community who must always look to Hope as a guide.
The message from Pope Leo was to have trust in God's plan, to have trust in one another, and to be giving, to share your talents and allow your talents to bear fruit within the community. To be in His Holiness presence twice within the week, the other with ten thousand people, was to see the global outreach the Catholic Faith has, and see a Church that is alive with hope.
The visit involved many experiences that were life changing, including a visit to the Scavi at the Vatican which houses St Peter's remains. It is only open to 150 daily, so to have that experience made the Catholic tradition and history come alive with the evidence that continues to be unearthed of Christ's time on earth.
We celebrated Mass daily and visited many Basilica's and Church's. At daily Mass I was able to pray for the community of Holy Family, lighting a candle for our community at each of the four major Basilicas in Rome. Assisi was life changing for me, having had St Francis as my confirmation Saint.
His message, to rebuild the church was never more relevant than coming together with about 750 people on a Saturday night to pray the Rosary in Italian, then walk the streets with some chants.
It was incredible because it happens every week at that parish, and so many young people made it their weekly routine and catch up time, and whilst reverend at times, it was a genuine celebration of joy. I was also able to visit and pray in front of the body of Saint Carlo Acutis. This was special as our senior students showed great interest in this.
The challenge will now be, how do I take the privilege and create something meaningful for all of our students and families to experience?
ESafety Summit
Today, I am at our MACS e-safety summit. I have heard from Victoria Police, the E-safety Commisioner, AI researchers and our Holy Family friend, Dr Billy Garvey. Some of the issues raised are confronting. Some of the stories, horrific. We can not bury our heads in the sand and I look forward to have some opportunities to share this information. One fact that I can't get my head around as a dad is that 1 in 10 children have experienced sexual extortion, 41% of these had the image digitally manipulated, which means that photo was created from a 'normal' photo, which was used to create a fake nude photo. The child did nothing wrong, yet had a nude photo being circulated. I will be running a parent session on this soon.
Melbourne Cup
It was wonderful to see the reactions of our children to see the Melbourne Cup yesterday. There were many jaws dropping to see the trophy in person. We had Melbourne Cup winner Shiela Laxon, who spoke to the children about some simple messages: dream big, work hard at what you enjoy and girls can achieve great things. It was beautiful to see many families come and get a family photo with the Cup.
Closure Days
A reminder about our Closure Days coming up: 31st October: Staff RE PD
Monday 3rd November: Staff Report Writing, Tuesday 4th November: Melbourne Cup Day