As part of the Mass, the winners of the St Pius X Art Competition were announced.
The competition is an initiative of the Catholic Parish of Blackbutt South with the support of Fr Terry Horne, Helene O'Neill and parishioners. The driving force behind the competition is former students (now at SFX) Lachlan Byrnes and Helayna McCloy.
The St Pius X Religious Studies faculty led last year by Mrs Simone Kelly and now by Mrs Fiona Duque have integrated the artwork competition into an assessment task for the Year 8 topic "Catholic Prayer and Spirituality".
After Communion, Helene O’Neill and Adam Frost spoke to the congregation, saying that the competition is another sign of a great and growing relationship between the parish and the St Pius X community.
“What is an amazing thing to consider when you think about it, is 281 students that have had an opportunity to stop and reflect on what their Catholic spirituality means to them and express it through creativity,” said Mr Frost.
“The level of depth of spiritual maturity of many of them is very affirming for those of us who teach Year 8 Religious Studies.”
Fr Terry Horne was acknowledged for making himself openly available to the St Pius X community for morning Mass every second Wednesday at St Pius X for the parishioners, staff, students and parents to gather for Eucharist.
The competition was judged by Learning Support Teacher, Jordan Fardell, who has a Masters in Theology and is a locally exhibited artist.
“With so many wonderful works, it was extremely hard to find the top five, and even then trying to decide the winner was difficult. I was looking for artistic elements; something unique that made the theme of Catholic Spirituality clear through the visual representation,” said Miss Fardell.
The 40 shortlisted artworks are now on a Blackbutt South Parish tour (St Columba's Church, Adamstown to St Kevin's, Cardiff) so that other members of the parish can see the works.
They will then be framed and hung in prominent places around the school and scanned to become PowerPoint backgrounds for Parish liturgical use.
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