When students attend a new school named Pope Francis, principal Anthony Arcadi hopes children will embrace the Pope’s qualities of caring, compassion and conversation.

The fall school year is just around the corner and The Catholic Register has put together a Catholic education special feature.

As students and teachers prepare to start a new school year, it is appropriate to acknowledge the vital role of a group that is often maligned in education — those holding positions in administration.

TORONTO – During five years Enrico Colantoni spent at the Fr. Henry Carr Catholic High School as a student, the religious and lay educators became his family.

TORONTO – In many ways, Loretto College School hasn’t changed at all in the past 100 years.

Pope Francis, speaking to Italian school teachers and parents, said, “Education cannot be neutral. It is either positive or negative; either it enriches or it impoverishes; either it enables a person to grow or it lessens, even corrupts him. The mission of the school is to develop a sense of truth of what is good and beautiful.”

TORONTO - The Queen’s Park Dining Room was filled with the sounds of engaging and enriching discussion March 9 as Catholic representatives from across Ontario advocated for their education system.

A year ago, Patrick was a struggling Grade 2 student in Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic school system. But after switching to a private school in September he is thriving in an environment that his mother says is smaller and more attentive to individual needs.

Despite shuttering its doors and selling its campus in 1969, St. Dunstan’s University is still maintaining the presence of Catholic education on Prince Edward Island.

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - John Kostoff sees Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’: on Care for Our Common Home as a calling for Catholic educators to foster a sense of environmental responsibility rooted in religion.

“This is really a challenge that Pope Francis is presenting,” said Kostoff, director of education for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

TORONTO - Catholic school teachers, trustees and the provincial government have come to a tentative contract agreement just days before the start of the new school year.

TORONTO - Msgr. Ken Robitaille had one ambition — to be a parish priest.

It wasn’t to be a mover and shaker behind the scenes setting up the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops, or the bishops’ point man negotiating details of full funding for Ontario’s Catholic high schools, or to be rector of one of the busiest cathedrals in North America. He did all those things, and more. His sole ambition was to be a parish priest.

TORONTO - The 200-year tradition of Basilian education is taking a new path into the future — a path first walked by the disciples Jesus sent out two-by-two to connect with the villages of Galilee and change the world.

QUITO, Ecuador - Education is a right and a privilege that should impart not only knowledge and skills, but also a sense of responsibility for others and for the earth, Pope Francis told representatives of Ecuadorean schools and universities.