On Tuesday 2 July, pupils and staff from a number of Catholic schools from all over the country met at the Holy Apostles in Pimlico, London. They were there at the invitation of Citizens UK to celebrate their work for justice inspired by Catholic Social Teaching and community organising.
The first speaker was Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who welcomed the interface between Catholic Social Teaching and community organising. He outlined the key principles of CST, beginning with the dignity of the human person. The common good, he reminded us, was not all that common, since it calls for the social conditions in which everybody can live a truly human life, with nobody left behind. Working in school on small concrete projects, the Cardinal told the pupils, was like building up our social justice muscles to be agents of change in the world.
The next speaker was our own Raymond Friel, CEO of Caritas Social Action Network. Raymond spoke of the need to shift the dial from compassion to compassion with justice, a theme of Church teaching in recent years. He used the example of the Good Samaritan and the reflections of Martin Luther King Jnr. who said that he was tired of helping wounded people by the side of the road, he wanted to fix the road, pave the road, put in streetlights, make it safer for people so that everybody feels safe on the road.
Then we heard from the inspirational pupils from the schools who told us about their own projects in their local communities. We heard from the pupils of St Bonaventure’s in Newham who had been working on safer routes to school; from the pupils of St Antony’s primary school, also in Newham, about their work on the Living Wage; from the students of St Thomas More High School in North Shields about their campaign to lower bus fares for sixth formers; from the pupils of Cardinal Newman school in Hove about their campaign to improve mental health support for pupils; from the Kingdom Builders of St Clare’s primary school in Birmingham about their work to tackle discrimination using one-to-one conversations; from the students of Wimbledon College, Merton about their work with the local NHS Mental Health Trust to secure increased funding for mental health support.
It was an inspiring day and an occasion for the adult leaders in the room to listen and learn from the young people. At CSAN, we look forward to further conversations with Citizens UK to discern where we might work together for justice.
For more information on Citizens UK, please visit: https://www.citizensuk.org/
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