Catholic Life
St Basil's Year of Justice 2024-2025
This year our focal Mission Value will be Justice
The Four Pillars of Peace in Social Life: Truth, Justice, Charity and Freedom.
Justice is about truth, fairness and equality for all.
Year of Jubilee Launch Day - January
Our school community came together for an amazing launch for the very special Jubilee Year.
A Jubilee is celebrated within the Catholic church every 25 years. This year the theme will be 'Pilgrims of Hope'.
We are called together to experience joy and strength as we embarkon a journey to be 'agents of change,' working together for justice, love and peace, locally and globally.
After learning about the importance and theme of the Jubilee, the children across school have Celebrated the Word and written their own pledges.
We gathered together to reflect and share pledges before displaying them all around the hall.
We are excited for more events to come during the Jubilee Year and are filled with hope for the difference we can make in fulfilling our pledges!
Mission Days - Justice - January
We focused on this years house value of Justice and took part in a wide range of activities over two days. We learnt all about the lives of St Oscar Romero and St Mother Teresa; we used the Catholic Social Teaching mascot DJ the dolphin to talk about Distributive Justice; we linked our work to Fairtrade, learnt music about Justice, discussed P4C stimuli and created artwork to display in school. We also took time to reflect in some Prayer Spaces all about Justice in our school, homes, community and wider world.
Sacramental Celebration - Baptism - November
The families of Tommy, Billy, Teddy, Ezra and Zach joined the whole school as we came together for an amazing celebration in the school hall.
Father Mark Moran welcomed brothers Tommy, Billy and Teddy with a special Catholic blessing.
Ezra and Zach were then baptised as we all watched on, what an amazing experience to be part of!
Congratulations to all of the boys and their families - we hope you enjoyed your special celebration, including the cake afterwards! Thank you for sharing such a proud and important day with your St Basil's family.
Blessing of Mary in Honour of Christine Wilson - October
We gathered as a school family to remember Christine Wilson with Father Peter Ross.
Christine was a much loved and valued member of St Basil's and a former Chair of Governors.
We also welcomed Jim Wilson and members of their family, as well as some close friends.
Father Peter led us in prayer and dedicated our new statue of Mary to the memory of Christine, significant particularly during this special month of October.
The children shared in the our liturgy with readings and prayers, as well as with their absolutely beautiful singing.
The occasion was a heartfelt tribute which warmed all of our hearts and provided a lasting memory to treasure.
CAFOD Family Fast Day - Simple Lunch - September
As part of CAFOD Family Fast Day, pupils in KS2 were given the opportunity to join our CAFOD Simple Lunch.
Instead of their usual school dinner, these KS2 pupils chose to have a simple lunch of soup, bread and fruit, to show Solidarity and respect Human Dignity two of our Catholic Social Teaching principles. This showed how we can think of others who are less fortunate than ourselves and only have our fair share.
Harvest Foodbank Collection - September/October
We launched our Harvest campaign to support the Foodbank here in Widnes.
We held a special assembly and remembered what we have already managed to achieve as a school in helping those in need.
Photos of last year's visit to the Foodbank by the RE Ambassadors were a great reminder, as well as the visit from Margaret and Eileen, two of their volunteers.
To continue our promise to try and 'live in solidarity' with others, we will be collecting donations of cereal over the next month.
On Friday 18th October, we will hold our 'Cereal domino rally' with all of the boxes that are donated.
Watch the video of our event here https://www.stbasilsprimary.halton.sch.uk/work/harvest-cereal-challenge-for-widnes-foodbank/93352
St Basil's Year of Peace 2023-2024
Mission Mass - June
To conclude our Year of Peace we celebrated our Mission Mass in St Basil's church with Father Moran. It was a lovely special time for us all to come together, including our Year 6 prayer partners joining with EYFS
Sacramental Celebration - Holy Communion - June
In June the whole school celebrates with the children and families who have received the sacraments of reconciliation and Holy Communion in a special collective worship. The children enjoy wearing their special communion outfits again and the celebration cake!
Crowning of Mary - May
The whole school celebrated a beautiful Collective Worship for the crowning of Mary as May is the month of Mary.
Thank you to Father Clarke for leading our worship alongside our RE Ambassadors and some Year 6 children.
Mission Days - Peace - Archbishop Malcolm Visit - January
On Wednesday 17th January, we were joined by Archbishop Malcolm McMahon and other guests from the Archdiocese of Liverpool, along with Father Mark Moran and our school governors.
We enjoyed some very special events as part of our 'Year of Peace' (2023-24).
The children particpated in prayer spaces with activities that included painting peace pebbles, origami boats for our peace river, hanging peace doves and creating prayers in our prayer garden.
Time was spent reflecting on how peace begins with us and how we can help be bring peace in pur relationships.
Other great activities around school included a Peace Dance, Music to celebrate peace and learning sign language for the song 'Peace perfect peace'.
We were also joined by Peace Pathways who worked with each year group on how to solve problems when there is a conflict.
Laudato Si Days - November
We had two amazing days in which our whole school were able to learn about our Common home, build for nature and pray for our world.
This all followed Pope Francis' message to the world 'Laudato Si'
