Children to Pope Benedict XVI:
Relax on your birthday, let us do the work
LINDA REEVES | FC
(Left to right) Britton Glynn, Katie Humes, Catie Wegman, Sean Denes and Sabrina Probst design, cut and tie cloth to make a blanket as part of a service project at All Saints School in Jupiter. The on-going project is called “Katie’s Kovers” and was created to honor the memory of Kaitlin Charlton, an All Saints student who died in 2005 at age 13 of a brain tumor. The blankets are distributed to adults and children at hospitals.
Happy Birthday, Pope Benedict XVI! The Catholic students of Florida and the rest of the United States present you with countless gifts of acts of love wrapped with generosity and self-sacrifice in lovely packages of goodness tied with ribbons of kindness and gently topped with bows of peace and joy.
“Happy Birthday, and I hope you have a great day and great year. We’re helping out so you don’t have anything to worry about. Relax and have a great birthday, because we’re taking care of everything else,” said Christian Biggs, a seventh-grader at St. Anthony Catholic School in Lakeland, expressing his wish for the Holy Father. Christian’s gifts to the pope include serving at the altar, helping out in classrooms and participating in his school’s going-green efforts by picking up trash and cleaning school grounds.
Response to a call from the National Catholic Educational Association for students to honor the pope’s 81st birthday April 16 — which he will celebrate during his first trip to the U.S. April 15-20 — with pledges of community service to be performed by May 31 has been overwhelming. As of April 7, 208,988 students have committed more than 1.03 million service hours and the numbers continued to climb as April 11, the final date for reporting, approached. A document is being prepared to present this gift to the Holy Father April 17 at The Catholic University of America where he will address more than 200 college and university presidents and superintendents of schools from 195 Catholic dioceses, including those in Florida. Pope Benedict XVI will speak on the importance of Catholic education.
“The children are really inspired because it’s a birthday present. They like to think in terms of giving, and the fact that it’s a present and they’re giving it to the pope is the icing on the cake!” said Barbara McKee, religion teacher at Incarnation Catholic School in Sarasota, where 256 children have pledged 640 hours of service.
PROJECTS VARY IN SCALE
Implementation of the service hours was left up to the preference of each school. Some students served individually, others with their families, many in groups with classmates, or as an over all school project. Biggs’ reference to “everything else” was not an exaggeration.
Milagros Sanchez, in third grade at St. Anthony Catholic School in Lakeland, said she has been doing projects as part of her school-family group which meets for one hour every Friday morning after Mass. “Our school family is coloring, drawing, cutting out cards for nursing home residents and veterans and writing letters to the military.”
Sister Roberta Schmidt, superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Venice, explained, “This is an opportunity for Catholic schoolchildren throughout the U.S. to do something special. All of the schools in the diocese do volunteer work in various forms. All parish religious education programs also participate. Some are active in the (Florida Catholic’s) Long-Sleeve program (which supplies protective shirts for farmworkers); others help build Habitat (for Humanity) houses in Immokalee. These corporal works of mercy are part of Gospel values and are at the core of a Catholic education.”
At All Saints Catholic School in Jupiter, the students have reported service hours helping Safe Harbor, an animal clinic that had a fire and needed temporary housing for cats and dogs; baby-sitting for home and school meetings; spring cleanup activities and more.
“All Saint students are contributing 1,000 service hours doing various activities at school, in parishes (and) in the community in honor of Pope Benedict,” said Mary Castronuovo, a teacher coordinating some of the service events for student participation. “The fifth-graders are making blankets to give to children with cancer.”
Fifth-grader Stefan Shatter described his special mission in detail.
“You cut the fabric. You make strips and you tie them together to make a blanket,” he said.
The project, an ongoing one in the fifth-grade art class, is called “Katie’s Kovers” created to honor the spirit and memory of Kaitlin Charlton, an All Saints student who died in 2005 at age 13 of a brain tumor.
“We send the blankets to Jackson Memorial in Miami and Jupiter Medical Center here,” said Linda Charlton, Kaitlin’s mother, who works at the school. “They go to children in rehabilitation. They go to children with cancer, and they go to adults too.”
Sister of St. Joseph Ann Raymond Wood, director of community service at Jesuit High School in Tampa declared, “This birthday celebration should be a WOW! We have 635 boys who have completed 30,000 service hours so far. Over Easter break, 17 boys accompanied by seven adults traveled to New Orleans to participate in a program offering assistance to those who are still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina. They completed more than 1,000 hours as a group.”
Michael Gonzalez and James Haitz are both seniors who worked at the home of Joy Jones. On Wednesday, they removed all the furniture; on Thursday, took all the plaster off the walls and on Friday, they gutted the house.
Gonzalez shared, “At 4 p.m. on Friday, Ms. Jones was holding back tears because she said she had always seen nice things happen to other people, but it had never happened to her. Everywhere we went, people thanked us because without volunteers there was no way the work would have gotten done.”
James was struck by the pride throughout the city. “I think the pope should be proud of what the church has done. They know the church is always there.”
Justin Taylor is a junior who visited the Harry Thompson Center for the Homeless. “The people were eager to talk about the before and now. I met a quarterback from Tulane University. He lost his job and his house and is a resident at the shelter, but he’s going to keep on trying.”
FAMILIES GET INVOLVED
All 480 students at Christ the King School in Tampa are pledging a total of 1,000 hours in honor of the celebration. Principal Jane Forbus and campus minister Kelly Kearney sent a letter to parents that encouraged, “One way to keep the service commitment in the heart and mind of your child is to pray with your child for the pope.”
“Opportunities to give back to the community at a young age can be hard to find, so we made our own and had fun doing it!” said Jill Buhler. Her three sons — Austin in fifth grade, Ben in second grade and Cameron in kindergarten — decided a lemonade stand would make a great fundraiser and spent one morning of Easter break mixing water with powdered lemonade, and popping and bagging microwave popcorn. Ben’s hand-painted coconuts were added to the sale. Off they went to Palm Island Resort and in a mere two and a half hours, they raised $45 to be donated to the Children’s Cancer Center in Tampa.
“The boys collected more donations than actual sales and the highest price for a coconut was $2,” laughed Buhler, “but it was an act of goodness in the name of Our Lord and in honor of the pope!”
Several of the projects include children giving to other children who are experiencing difficulties.
A newspaper story about homeless students who are able to get school lunches during the week but go hungry on weekends spurred the student council of St. John the Evangelist Catholic School in Panama City into action. One Friday afternoon each month, students, teachers, parents, even neighbors gather to make at least 500 peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and deliver them to the local rescue mission for distribution to the children and their families.
This month the students are adding home-baked cookies and a birthday announcement, “Help celebrate the pope’s birthday with us!”
SPECIAL-NEEDS KIDS PITCH IN
Students from Father Anglim Academy at Dreams Are Free in Fort Myers have their own special needs, but also reach out to children with terminal illnesses on an ongoing basis. Twenty students raised $700 in their most recent math-a-thon, which will be donated to St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
“It is very heartwarming to see children who struggle with their own challenges reaching out to children with life-threatening illnesses. It’s something they really enjoy,” said Principal Lori Moreau.
Thirteen students and one staff member from Barry University in Miami are pledging their entire mission trip May 6-14 to teach English to the students at Fe y Alegria y Espiritu Santo Catholic elementary school in Fundacion, Dominican Republic, in honor of the pope. Dominican Sister Arlene Scott, director of campus ministry, said, “They’ll be getting a great experience of reality. They’ll work six to seven hours in the classroom, visit with families at lunch and in the evening. and end the day with reflection and prayer. So many more would like to go, but they can’t be accommodated.”
The students at Trinity Catholic School in Tallahassee have chosen a variety of service projects. Principal Janet Gendusa summed up the entire effort, “The children are excited about this being a present for the pope. They are praying for him. We’re so far away from the Vatican, but we’re so involved. They love celebrating the pope’s birthday. They love being able to give him a present. He is a presence for them.” n
ENDNOTE: Linda Reeves of the Florida Catholic staff contributed to this story.