Faith
Liturgies
At Kildare Catholic College we celebrate a range of important events. We have Masses for the beginning and end of the school year as well as significant community events or Church Feasts. We gather as a community or in House Groups to celebrate these important events. The students are directly involved and often lead various parts of these celebrations, including: Ash Wednesday, Easter, Nano Nagle and Edmund Rice, Anzac Day, Feast of the Assumption, just to name a few.
Retreats/Recollection and Community Days
At Kildare Catholic College the students engage in numerous opportunities to develop their faith life and spirituality. These activities include; religious education classes, community days, recollection days and retreats. These days are facilitated by our Chaplaincy service from St Michael’s Cathedral Parish as well as outside providers.
Participation in these days and events ensures that all students receive a holistic education.
Chaplain services St Michael’s Cathedral Parish
At Kildare Catholic College we provide students who have not had the opportunity to receive the sacraments of Baptism, First Reconciliation and First Holy Communion the opportunity to receive these sacraments. Students are given the opportunity to engage with an RCIA programme that prepares them to receive these sacraments if they so choose. This runs annually and is directed by the Leader of Faith and Mission.
Mission/Service
House Days
The Kildare Catholic College House Days are all connected to a charity. The charities we support include Caritas Australia, St Vincent de Paul, Catholic Missions, Micah House and Edel Quinn.
Students wear mufti on the House Days and there is always a theme. Student leaders run a range of events and also other fundraiser activities such as cake stalls and sausage sizzles.
Vinnies
At Kildare Catholic College we support St Vincent de Paul in a variety of ways. This includes school fundraisers to support the Winter and Christmas appeals. We also run fundraisers for Micah House and Edel Quinn shelter, who provide support to those who are homeless or living rough in Wagga Wagga.
Our senior students have the opportunity to participate in a Vinnies Winter sleepout. This gives them an opportunity to raise funds, as well as awareness among students and the community, of the plight of those who are homeless.
Charism
Presentation Sisters
Kildare Catholic College has a dual charism one of which is Presentation Sisters. This order of religious women was founded in Ireland by Venerable Nano Nagle. Nano decided to open a convent where women could share the mission of Jesus through prayer, teaching and care for the sick and needy. Nano and three companions opened the first Presentation Convent in Cork, Ireland, on Christmas Day in 1775. In 1784, at age 65, Nano died.
Mount Erin Convent was built in 1874-76 and is what is now known as the boarding school and also the Historic Centre. This historic site is where five Presentation Sisters from Ireland established a convent and school in 1876. We also have several sisters buried in the cemetery on site which is in the middle of the main quad area outside the Resource Centre.
The sisters spent many years teaching in the girls school and also at Trinity High School. Eventually due to the members of the congregation ageing the sisters started to slowly withdraw from the school teaching staff and there are no longer any sisters on staff at the school.
The feast of Nano Nagle is celebrated on 26th of April.
Christian Brothers
Kildare Catholic College has a dual charism with Christian Brothers being one of them. This order of men was founded by Blessed Edmund Rice. Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice, was a Roman Catholic missionary and educationalist. Edmund was the founder of two religious institutes of religious brothers: the Congregation of Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers.
The Ireland of Edmund’s day was an unjust place where many lived in poverty and social structures deeply oppressed the majority of the population. In 1802 he set up a free school for boys living in poverty. His aim was to promote an education that recognised the dignity of each individual and thus he sought to liberate them from their ignorance of God and of their Catholic faith, while at the same time empowering them with an education which would enable them to rise from the demeaning poverty and sense of hopelessness in which they were trapped.
Edmund died in 1844, aged 82. On the 6th of October 1996 Edmund was beatified in Rome by Pope John Paul II.
His brothers came to Sydney in 1843 but left in 1848, to return back in 1868 going on to found a range of schools across Australia. The brothers founded St Michael’s High School, a predecessor to Kildare. The Christian Brothers began to slowly withdraw from the schools as the members of the order began to age and they had less men joining the order.
The feast of Blessed Edmund Rice is on the 5th of May.
