The Church Year that runs from Advent 2024 to Advent 2025 has been designated by the Church as a ‘Year of Jubilee.’ This festival in the Church was officially launched at St Anselm’s on Friday 24th January, in conjunction with Catholic schools across England and Wales. The Year of Jubilee occurs every twenty five years, and was instituted in the Catholic Church over 700 years. It is a call to renewal; where Catholics seek to re-invigorate the life of the Church through Prayer and Action. St Anselm’s, being part of the wider Church, must answer that call. Our school-launch saw the creation of the Student Chaplaincy Team. This team is comprised of Years Seven and Eight, and it will allow for better student involvement in the curation of our school prayer life, and in planning our school liturgy as a whole. This Team marks the beginning of an effort towards prayer renewal in our school, led by students and informed by student’s needs and concerns.

Moving further into the year, we will seek to Promote the Spiritual in various other way: through new staff formation opportunities, through the strengthening of our charism through prayer, through new endeavours by our Edmund Rice and St Vincent De Paul Societies, and by seeking to expand our relationships with local parishes. Central to these efforts will be the mass, the celebration of which takes place largely in our Christian Brother’s Chapel – during this year of renewal we would like to more firmly establish the Chapel as the centre of school and its life.

The Holy Father, Pope Francis has called us to be ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ in this coming year. This is something we would like to express in prayer and in action: through our Lent and Eastertide reflections where we will link the journey of Christ during Holy Week to an exploration of Hope in our own lives, and in action, through pilgrimages and the work of our Lenten Charities.