Students, teachers prepare for Youth Day pilgrimage

Sydney
23 June 2002

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Students, teachers prepare for Youth Day pilgrimage

Mark Woolford (front, left), of the Catholic Education Office, who will lead the Sydney archdiocesan schools group on the pilgrimage to World Youth Day, with the seven teachers who will accompany the students. They are, from left (back row): Rebecca Dennis, Holy Spirit College, Lakemba; Phillip Scollard, Domremy College, Five Dock; Steven Turley, Trinity Catholic College, Auburn; Elizabeth Moodey, Marist College, Kogarah; Front: Mary Musolino, Bethlehem College, Ashfield; Gabrielle Scanlon, Mt St Joseph, Milperra; Damien Kerr, Marist College, Penshurst

By Marilyn Kerjean

Every school retreat has a few students whose approach is such that “you go home and think the world will be OK”, says Phillip Scollard, religious education co-ordinator at Domremy College, Five Dock.

“These kids going (on pilgrimage) will all be like that,” he said of the students he will accompany to World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, Canada, next month.

“I only hope some of it will rub off on to me.”

There are 56 high school students, mainly Year 11s, in the first Sydney archdiocesan schools group to participate in a World Youth Day.

Their school communities have assisted them with the cost of travel, mainly through fundraising.

Half of them will travel to Mexico before going to Canada. The others will leave Sydney later and fly directly to Canada.

Br Kelvin Canavan, executive director of schools in the Sydney archdiocese, has told the seven Catholic high school teachers who are accompanying the schools group that it is a passion of Archbishop George Pell’s to have some school students experience a World Youth Day.

Br Kelvin met the teachers at the Sydney Catholic Education Office to talk about their hopes and aspirations for the pilgrimage.

Describing the international Catholic youth festival as “a very special outreach”, he told them that World Youth Day in Toronto would, perhaps, be the way God reaches out to the student pilgrims.

Elizabeth Moodey, a teacher at Marist College, Kogarah, hopes the students in her group “will be challenged and grow with those challenges” through the experience.

Damien Kerr, religious education teacher at Marist College, Penshurst, went on the Sydney archdiocese’s Rome and the Holy Land pilgrimage for World Youth Day 2000.

“My faith has grown tenfold since then,” he said, “so hopefully the same will happen to the students.

“I think the most important time in their spiritual life is the next eight years because before that (for example) they might only go to church with their parents.”

Rebecca Dennis, religious education co-ordinator at Holy Spirit College, Lakemba, hopes the staff and students will make connections with each other while they travel together and that the world gathering will be a “fantastic resource” in building up a faith community back home.

Mark Woolford, of the Catholic Education Office (Eastern Region), who will lead the archdiocesan schools group, agrees.

“I hope that in some way they can network their experiences (on their return) in regional groups or cluster groups,” he said.

“For the leaders, I hope it is a pleasant experience with youth; that you will be able to share comfortably your faith and that students can share comfortably their faith and be able to ask questions of you.

“I’m sure we have the right people who will create that atmosphere for them.

“The students (will) hopefully have an experience where they can meet their God. I hope that they can have a faith experience and affirm the faith they have.

“To see that Catholicism is a universal language, too, that there are others around the world who have faith will, I think, enrich their faith.”

The students will take part in some volunteer community service while in Toronto as part of World Youth Day 2002.

“That should inspire them also to put their faith in action,” Mr Woolford said.