By Anthony Barich
CATHOLIC Mission will form student leaders in Catholic schools this year to encourage alternate activities than the traditional alcohol-fuelled, post-graduation, ‘schoolies’ weekend.
The Church agency, which encourages the living out of the Gospel in service of the person, is working with the Archdiocesan Catholic Youth Ministry and a number of interested schools around Perth to run formation workshops during lunchtime in school hours, then on weekends.
The end result would be for students to partake in Catholic Mission’s Gap on a Mission programme, visiting countries with a missionary focus, then returning to Perth and helping to develop a missionary culture on a local level in parishes and schools.
This would, in turn, help them discern their own vocation in life – whatever the calling.
Fr Patrick Byrne SVD, Secretary General of the Pontifical Society of the Holy Childhood in Rome, was due to trigger these workshops with a session at the Catholic Pastoral Centre in Highgate on 19 March, but did not make the trip to Australia as the 60-year-old had a heart attack on 7 March.
With that event cancelled, Catholic Mission will run another workshop on 14 May at the Pastoral Centre by its diocesan director Francis Leong to form student leaders from 10 schools, including Prefects respected by their peers, to then encourage them to foster Christian leadership among them.
Edith Cowan University chaplain Fr Erasmus Norviewu-Morty SVD and Tom Gannon, campus minister of the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Fremantle campus, will also be involved in the workshops.
Catholic Mission wants to link this school leadership with parishes, which, Mr Leong said, is not happening today, “and we see that as a deficiency”.
The concept of peer to peer education – having youth from wealthier countries link up with those in poorer ones as part of a missionary approach to a devotion to the Child Jesus – was pioneered by French Bishop Charles August Marie de Forbin-Janson, founder of the Pontifical Society of the Holy Childhood.
The Society’s purpose was, and is, to educate youth to foster an apostolic and solidary charity of a genuinely missionary spirit and not only a social action.
Only 50 years ago, Mr Leong said, this concept of peer to peer education was only just starting to happen in the Church, proving that the French Bishop was ahead of his time, “as so many thinkers in the Catholic Church are, but are not recognised until later”.
“Student leaders can show true student leadership – to encourage their peers to show solidarity with others not so privileged as themselves, and to see what Christ is saying in the process; how the poor speak to them; and to therefore deepen their faith,” he said.
Translating the overseas missionary focus to a local context will help nurture in youth a sense of what the Church is calling them to do in their lives, and would subsequently foster a “vocational culture” which has not existed since Religious Orders have declined in numbers and appearance.
“Decades ago, youth would go on these missionary trips with Religious Orders and, through peer pressure, others would join them on mission, then end up joining the Religious Orders,” Mr Leong said.
Catholic Mission’s Gap on a Mission programme, driven by properly formed student leaders whom “the rest of the gang look up to”, would re-energise a culture that will help youth with vocational discernment – to whatever calling.