Pupils and staff reflected on the season of Advent in our weekly assemblies leading up to the end of term, led Mrs Guest, Deputy Headteacher and the RE Department. Advent is a time of preparation and waiting and we called on one another to use this period to draw closer to God. Even in these challenging times it is easy to fill our time with shopping and our plans for celebrating. We asked our community to think about the CAFOD campaign “Messages to the Brave”. CAFOD was asking their supporters to send a message of support to human rights campaigners around the world to show that they have a community of people in the UK who are all praying and standing with them.

We looked forward to celebrating a liturgy together as a whole school community and decided that we actually wanted the whole school to celebrate with other schools in the Archdiocese of Southwark and so on Thursday 17th December at 11am all of our form groups watched Archbishop John Wilson’s Advent Liturgy live via Zoom. Pupils from school across the Diocese including from Canterbury, Merton, Wimbledon, Southwark took part in the readings including one of our Year 7 pupils Patrick, from 7.1 who did a beautiful reading based on the Gospel of Luke. At the end of the celebration pupils from all of the schools were able to wish each other a “Merry Christmas!” live on Zoom. We look forward to seeing each other in person soon but very much enjoyed being able to share this special celebration with the pupils, members of the Diocese of Southwark Education Commission and Archbishop John Wilson.