By Most Rev. Timothy Costelloe, SDB
Archbishop of Perth
Perth, Australia, 19 June 2016 -- Catholic schools cannot afford to be places where the topic of faith is “off limits”, said Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, speaking to some 1,400 representatives of the Catholic Education sector across Australia at the 2016 National Catholic Education Commission Conference. The Conference was held at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sunday, 19 June to Wednesday, 22 June.
According the Australia Catholic Year Book (2015) there are some 1653 Catholic School in the country, with 402.584 students in the primary schools, 333.104 students in the secondary schools and more than 68.000 students in the tertiary education or special schools around the country. Due to the multi-cultural and multi-religious composition of the Catholic school students, the faith education becomes part of the Catholic identity of each education institution. With the drastically diminishing numbers of religious and priests and rapidly growing numbers of lay people involved in education mission, also 2016 Conference in Perth tackled this challenge.
Very rich 5 days national level event was animated by many top resource persons, including also Card. Oscar Maradiaga Rodriguez, SDB (Honduras). Archbishop Costelloe, the Chairman of the Education Commission of the Australian Bishops Conference greets the AustraLasia readers after the final day of the Conference:
"Greetings from Perth where I have Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez staying with me. He is the special guest and speaker at our National Catholic Education Conference which has just finished. We have been hosting here in Perth some 1400 delegates from around the country on the theme: Catholic Education - Lead to Faith, Faith to Lead. It has been a great success!"
Full text of the Archbishop Costelloe is available on the net:Catholic Archdiocese of Perth
