Catholic students pray the rosary for the Bishop's Synod

Friday, Oct. 10, 2014

DRAPER – From Ogden to Draper, students at all three Utah Catholic high schools gathered at 9 a.m. Oct. 6 to recite the rosary with the intention of praying for the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which began at the Vatican Oct. 5 to discuss pastoral challenges of the family.

“The main thing that we really wanted to accomplish with the rosary on Monday was to create a greater sense of community among the students” at all the schools as well as within each student body, said Juan Diego Catholic High School senior Gabe Freeman, who had the idea for the rosary.

Last year, students from all three schools gathered at Juan Diego in Draper to recite the rosary in recognition of October as the month dedicated to this devotion, but this year they decided to remain on their own campuses for the rosary, Freeman said.

Students from Saint  John the Baptist schools joined those at Juan Diego for the rosary.

Before the all-school rally, Dave Brunetti, special events at Juan Diego, talked to the students about the synod, which he said is “a fancy word for a meeting.”

The Catholic bishops and other synod participants from throughout the world are discussing “what does family mean to us as Christians, as Catholics; what does family mean to us as the role of the family has shifted through the years,” said Brunetti.

The synod discussion is  intended to prepare an agenda for a world synod next year.

Lynelle Williams, Juan Diego’s director of student activities/student government, talked to the students about prayer.

“The power of prayer is real and, as this is a group of 1,000 or more out there,  I know that our Father in heaven and his son Jesus Christ answer prayers,” she said, adding that the particular faith affiliation of the students wasn’t important.  “There is diversity in this group of many faiths and, as we pray, carry that prayer you have of your faith for those in Rome.”

All people, not just Catholics, experience turmoil in the family, Williams said. “I feel it, I see it in my own community.”

Williams asked the students to pray for those in Rome, that they would return with ways to help people with their families.

 At Saint Joseph Catholic High School in Ogden, theology teacher Thomas Tulp led the Jayhawks in the prayer Pope Francis taught Catholics worldwide to pray for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Rome, as they met to begin discussing the topics of marriage, divorce, contraception and homosexuality. 

The SJCHS students will continue to pray for the bishops throughout the synod, which ends Oct. 19. 

 “We also tried to explain what the synod is, and the theology department will be discussing it over the next couple of weeks,” said Tulp. “We will discuss why it is so important; that being because it is an extraordinary synod. It is expressing and understanding of a lot of the problems of the Church; not so much doctrinal issues, but the hardships that are on people’s hearts.” 

The theology department would like to “express to the students how we as a Church can pray for the synod to go forward and enter into the situation of the love of a family and the suffering of a family; we often forget the suffering a family experiences,” Tulp said.

Similarly, at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City, theology teacher Luke Stager reviewed with his freshman class the information on the rosary he had presented on Oct. 3, then talked about the synod before they entered the chapel to pray the rosary with Susan Monserret’s junior theology class.