Catholic Identity & Mission News

In a week’s time, our Year 12 students will head to Rawson and participate in their Year 12 Retreat program. For three days and two nights, they will take some time out to reflect on their own life and faith journeys to this point and consider and aspire to what the future may hold for them. In one of the activities, the Year 12 Class of 2023 will determine what their ‘mission’ will be as leaders of the College next year. To guide them, they will work in House groups and focus particularly on one of our three pillars – Faith, Service or Education – or on one of our ROCKS – Respect, Organisation, Collaboration, Kindness, or Safety. These pillars and whole school behaviours were also introduced to our students who will be our youngest members of the College community, our Year 7 Class of 2023, when they enjoyed their Orientation Day on Tuesday, November 8. And the reality is, these values inform and inspire all our year levels during their time at the College.

The first of them, Faith, is the primary distinctive factor of the education provided at St. Peter’s College. We are a Catholic school, committed to the teachings of Jesus Christ and Church’s Mission to spread the Good News of Jesus to all. But we do so in dialogue with other faith traditions because a richness of our school is its diversity. We follow the lead of our Pope, Pope Francis who continues to witness to the love and mercy of Jesus as he reaches out to Catholics and non-Catholics around the world. His recent trip to Bahrain, a predominantly Muslim country, was criticised by some who would prefer that he focus his attention solely on revitalising the Catholic faith. But as it was reported by journalist Robert Mickens recently, “..everything Francis is concerned about is a matter of faith to him. Here are just a few of those things:

- respecting and protecting the dignity of every human person

- being good guardians of all forms of life (i.e. caring for people and all creation)

- championing the freedom of religion

- promoting mutual understanding and friendship among people of differing faiths

- working towards Christian unity

- dialoguing with those perceived to be enemies

- promoting world peace and the elimination of weapons and war

Here is a practical model of our own College theme, ‘therefore prepare your minds for action’ as faith in Jesus and his teachings of fraternity, solidarity and mercy inform this outreach of dialogue and peace on a global scale. We’ll settle for being more local with our efforts and hopefully the upcoming Retreat, transition program and Headstart can give all our students the opportunity to consider how they might express their faith in God and humanity in practical ways. Our upcoming Vinnies Christmas appeal will be a good starting place for them, and all members of our College community, and will exemplify our second pillar, service, but more about that in the next newsletter!

You can read more about Pope Francis in ‘Peace and care for creation: the pope's priorities are exactly right’ at: