A new, three-year pastoral plan will drive Toronto’s 195 Catholic schools and 91,000 Catholic students to a deeper sense of who they are and what they are meant to be, even as campaigning Ontario politicians promise to tinker with school curricula to gain votes.

There was worldwide disbelief on May 13, 1981 as word spread that Pope John Paul II had been shot four times in an assassination attempt. The gunman was sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned in 2000 at the request of John Paul. This is The Catholic Register’s report in the wake of the the attempt on the pontiff’s life, from May 23, 1981:

The kids at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic Elementary School in Kitchener, Ont., are breaking down walls with science, or more accurately, one particular wall in the middle of their school gym. 

To the boys on the senior high school soccer team, it was only natural to reach out to people their age who were suffering in the northern part of the province. 

Catholic schools have a “unique opportunity” to guide young people through the social, ethical and economic challenges of today, Ontario’s bishops say in a pastoral letter for education.

Twenty-four Catholic high school students and five adult supervisors gathered in Consuelo, Dominican Republic, to debrief our day. We had toured a batay (sugar workers’ village) outside the city along a road that by Canadian standards would be considered impassible.

Bigger is better and if we don’t get better we’re going to get beat, is the message one religious education teacher has brought back from a giant American convention for Catholic teachers.

A sampling of recent media indicates voices are again ramping up their call for one school system in Ontario or, in short, for the abolishment of Catholic schools.