Through Mission Together, the children’s branch of Missio, children everywhere live out their mission: to share God’s love with the whole world. In a unique exchange of love and friendship children pray for and share with one another. Pope Francis has made October 2019 an Extraordinary Month of Mission during which he calls us to make a special effort to share God’s love around the world. No one is too young or too small to take part.

To mark this special occasion, Mission Together is inviting children in England and Wales to design a postcard, showing how Mission Together helps children all over the world, by feeding hungry people with food and hope; offering those who are thirsty water and faith and helping people who are sick with medicine and prayers.

The theme of the design is: ‘Our Mission: To Share God’s Love with the Whole World’. The competition is open to all children living in England and Wales aged between 5 and 14.

For information about the competition please visit www.missiontogether.org.uk/pupil-postcard-competition and to find out more about the Extraordinary Month of Mission please go to www.missio.org.uk/emm

Happy Drawing!

The Rt Rev Marcus Stock, Bishop of Leeds, has been elected as the new Chairman of the Catholic Education Service.

He was elected at the Bishops’ spring plenary held at the Royal English College in Valladolid, Spain and succeeds the Most Rev, Malcolm McMahon, Archbishop of Liverpool.

Archbishop McMahon, who has chaired the CES since 2009, was elected as the Vice President of the Bishops’ Conference.

Bishop Stock was Director of Schools for the Archdiocese of Birmingham between 1999 – 2009 and Acting Director of the CES between 2011 – 13.  He has been a member of the Management Committee of the CES since 2015.

Bishop Stock commented: “The Catholic Education Service provides vital support and guidance for dioceses and schools throughout England and Wales, and I look forward as its new Chairman to working with  the CES in the years ahead.

“I would like to thank Archbishop McMahon for the dedicated and faithful service he has given to the CES over the last ten years and assure him of our prayers for his new role.”

As part of the revision of the Religious Education Curriculum Directory we are seeking the views of teachers. This will be done in two stages. The first stage is to ask schools to complete a questionnaire. The questionnaire can be completed using this link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZSg4i89-qt5TAw1ad7MPmRn0ubOLTrOxg1V8q-h9NbYYzRw/viewform?usp=sf_link 

The deadline for questionnaire submissions is 24th May 2019.

The second stage is to invite teachers to a face to face consultation as part of the CREDO professional development days in the summer. The dates and venues for these are as follows:

Saturday 22 June, St Mary’s University, Twickenham
Tuesday 25 June, Leeds Trinity University
Wednesday 26 June, Liverpool Hope University
Wednesday 3 July, Newman University, Birmingham

To see full details for each of these days and to book a place please use the links below:

For Saturday 22 June at St Mary’s, click here:
https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/events/2019/06/credo-day 
For Tuesday 25 June at Leeds Trinity, click here:
http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/events/credo-day-2019 
For Wednesday 26 June at Liverpool Hope, click here:
https://store.hope.ac.uk/product-catalogue/events/credo-days-2019/credo-days-2019 
For Wednesday 3 July at Newman, click here:
https://www.newman.ac.uk/event/credo-training-day/ 

The revised edition of the Religious Education Curriculum Directory has a planned publication date of September 2020.