By Frank Flegel

Members of the Saskatchewan Catholic School Boards Association (SCSBA) and the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan (CHAS) met in conference together from October 20 to 22, 2017. The conference was themed Ministering to God’s Beloved: serving and learning from those who are vulnerable.

All the keynote speakers spoke to the sub-theme of vulnerability. The opening keynote speaker was Anne Butler, Executive Director and Founder of Interior by Design Associates: Cultivating Wholeheartedness in Healthcare. She talked about the beauty of vulnerability and described her own struggles with imperfectness. “We need to cultivate the vulnerability in ourselves, and recognize the beauty in that. It’s a good reflective practice,” she said. “We resist vulnerability because it reminds us of our frailty.” She reminded her audience that we are born with an inner beauty, created in the image of God. In Session 2 the next day, she talked about embracing the...

By Frank Flegel

Grade seven and eight students at St. Dominic Savio School in Regina expressed surprize at how quickly life on the prairies changed for the Indigenous people after the Europeans arrived.  They participated in a Blanket Exercise accompanied by a couple of short videos that said an estimated 20 million people lived on what they called Turtle Island (North America); they had their own social, commercial, cultural, and government structures.

Joanna Landry, Regina Catholic School Division Coordinator of First Nations, Métis, Inuit Education (FNMI), aided by Residential School survivor Susan Beaudin, described how laws were passed that took away their land, language, and culture in an effort to solve the “Indian Problem” as it was described by some politicians of the day.

Blanket Exercise participants place blankets on the floor roughly in the shape of Turtle Island, an example of which was shown on a video. With the floor completely covered, they...

ARCHBISHOP BLESSES THREE NEW REGINA SCHOOLS
By Frank Flegel

Archbishop Donald Bolen was kept busy in early September blessing three new schools that officially opened for 2017-2018 school year.  

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha School was blessed September 19, Saint Elizabeth School on September 20 and Saint Nicholas School on September 22.  Each of these new Catholic schools is partnered with a public school as part of the Saskatchewan Government’s joint-use schools dictum that saw 18 new schools built throughout the Province, in Regina, Saskatoon, Warman and Martensville. All were built under a Public Private Partnership (P3) Model.

Archbishop Bolen spoke briefly at each school prior to the blessing, giving a bit of history of the Saint each school is named for. The ceremony began with students processing into the gymnasium with the school’s cross and placed it in front of the podium. Then the Archbishop and Deacon Joe Lang began the blessing ceremony.     ...

by Frank Flegel

Regina Archbishop Donald Bolen told a church full of educators that teaching is one of the most fundamental human tasks there are.  He celebrated the opening mass for the Regina Catholic School Division to start the 2017-2018 school year. “It is the duty of family and community to teach a newborn child how to live and love and how to be human,” said Bolen. His homily focused on the school division’s theme for the 2017-2018 school year, Let Your Light Shine.

The Archbishop stated, “In the Gospels Christ told his disciples to be the light of the world.” Then he “unpacked” that gospel in terms of the role a teacher plays in Catholic education on behalf of the community and the Church.

What is the light you are to carry? he asked of the more than 1,100 teachers and staff who filled Resurrection Church. “That light is the joy of being alive; it is a deep abiding sense that life is good, that life is blessed.  You are beloved sons and daughters of God...