MISSION CENTRAL
News from Christine Cross
Director of Mission
St Augustine's College Cairns
Sacramental Program
St Augustine’s offers a Sacramental Program for any students who, with their parents' or carers' knowledge and consent, wish to complete their sacraments of initiation into the Catholic faith: Baptism, Reconciliation, First Eucharist and Confirmation. If your son is interested, please talk to him about this important step, and, if you wish to support him in this, please email Maree McCormack, executive assistant to the Leadership Team, at mmccormack@cns.catholic.edu.au for more information. The sacramental Mass will be celebrated by Bishop Joe in Term 3.
Service update – John Picco
Some reasons why we should help Marist schools in the Pacific: An example of a school that compares to ours is St Joseph’s in the Solomon Islands. The lack of clean water in that school is a serious problem. Cold water on tap isn’t accessible at St Joseph’s; drinking water is supplied from rainwater tanks and students are strongly discouraged from drinking the tap water due to poor filtration. Also, the kind of staff we have in Tolle’s and groundkeepers aren't available at St Joseph’s. Instead, prefects and student leaders clean the grounds and cook. Hot chips and pasta don’t appear for the students wanting a meal. Food like cabbages have to be grown and prepared for the whole school then paired with something else like rice.
During this time of Lent, showing kindness through giving to MAPS is a fabulous way of helping others. Our efforts will make a real difference, and we will have the satisfaction of knowing we have helped those less fortunate.
Currently, we have raised $4,000 dollars with many homerooms still in the planning stages. There are still many things they could do like thong-throwing competitions, spiders for sale, pizza and ice cream, guess the number of lollies in a lolly jar, basketball shoot out, golf and Zooper Dooper sales. These are just a few of the events that students might like to do!
Finally, the support from the senior students for Rosies this term has been overwhelming. Thank you for generously giving your time to help those doing it tough in Cairns.
SRC 2026 – Lachlan Turner and Jonathan O’Farrell
Early March, the newly voted SRC Council experienced a day of leadership lessons and activities built to challenge our ideas of leadership, student wellbeing, and inspire potential future projects that we might be working on this year. Led by Br Tony we were invited to share our ideas, experiences, and topics for new initiatives and ways to improve Saints. This day was very rewarding to our newly elected SRC council and will hopefully guide their actions into the future. The College welcomes these students to their new leadership roles.
They received their badges at the assembly this week and we look forward to working with them this year.
