This September Cronin moves to Pembroke, Ont., to take over as superior general of her religious order, the Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception.
“It’s been a privilege to have worked for the Catholic education community,” said Cronin. “It’s been a wonderful 20 years. They’ve been really growing years and a great opportunity to work on the Catholic curriculum for our schools.”
Established by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario in 1986, the Institute for Catholic Education (ICE) functions as a discussion table for the seven major partners of Catholic education in Ontario, from the Ontario bishops to teachers, principals, parents and other education partners. Cronin said keeping the dialogue going between these seven parties has been ICE’s greatest success.
“We’ve been able to keep the partners in conversation with one another in terms of planning and unfolding Catholic education in the province,” she said. “I would say that is the biggest accomplishment. I’m a great believer that things get worked out through dialogue and conversation.”
Cronin first took over the Toronto office in 1993 after being recruited as a candidate to replace Msgr. Dennis Murphy, who served in the role for seven years. Prior to this Cronin had been superintendent of schools for the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board.
“I said oh well that sounds like a challenge,” said Cronin. “At the time I had done post-graduate studies in adult education and at the time, it’s not that it has gone away, there was tremendous focus in the Catholic education community for ongoing adult faith formation for teachers, for principals, vice principals, superintendents, directors of education and probably that was what challenged me most. One of the first programs that I worked on setting up was adult leadership certification with the University of St. Michael’s College.”
On Aug. 30, just days before the new school year, Cronin officially closed the door to her sixth floor office in Toronto for the last time. The office will now belong to her successor, Michael Paulter.
Due to Pautler’s 30 years of experience in Catholic education, Cronin is confident he will be able to handle the inevitable changes to the sexual education curriculum and continued implementation of Bill-13, the two hot button education issues for ICE.
“He was a principal in the early 2000s, he was a part of our committee which wrote the first pastoral guidelines to assist students of same-sex orientation,” she said. “And he’s been director of education in the Halton Catholic school board where he has worked to implement Bill-13.”