In the Catholic Church, 2025 marks a Jubilee Year, with Pope Francis designating its theme as “Pilgrims of Hope.”
On Thursday, we introduced this theme to our students, who participated by completing pledge forms and writing their aspirations on “I hope…” cards.
Below, you’ll find an FAQ about the Jubilee:
What is a Jubilee Year?
In the Catholic Church, a Jubilee or Holy Year is a special year of forgiveness and reconciliation, in which people are invited to come back into right relationship with God, with one another, and with all of creation.
How often is a Jubilee Year?
A Jubilee Year is celebrated by the Church every 25 years. This has been the case since 1470, when Pope Paul II changed it from every 50 years.
A Pope can also proclaim an Extraordinary Jubilee, like the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy which Pope Francis inaugurated in 2015.
What is the theme of the Jubilee Year in 2025?
The theme is Pilgrims of Hope. Pope Francis has invited Catholics to renew our hope and discover a vision that can “restore access to the fruits of the earth to everyone”. We are also invited to rediscover a spirituality of God’s creation in which we understand ourselves as “pilgrims on the earth” rather than masters of the world.
You can find out more about the Jubilee by watching this short video
CTK Pray is the new way for students to start their day in prayer, connect with our school community and be part of Catholic Life and Mission of CTK.
You can visit our website – https://ctkpray.online – where students will find resources, ideas, media and links to help them during form prayer together.
We would also highly encourage everyone to follow our dedicated Instagram @ctk_pray for all the latest news and updates from our wonderful Chaplaincy Team.
In January 2023, Christ the King partnered with Lumbira Community School in Malawi.
In Malawi, there is a three-tier system of schools – boarding schools, day schools and community schools. On the lower end of the tier, funding for community schools is very low compared to the other schools, so as part of the partnership, CTK’s Culture Club organise fundraising events to help raise money, which has so far totalled £380. This translates to 380,000 Kwacha, which is a huge amount for Lumbira.
The events have so far included –
Fairtrade Fortnight – Culture Club organised a stall of Fairtrade products to sell to staff, raising around £30.
Culture Week – Alongside a cultural clothing non-uniform day, the Culture Club arranged a food stall in the dining room selling lots of different foods from cultures around the world. Culture Week was a very successful fundraising event, raising around £350.
Culture Club have also organised a letter writing exchange, where each form group wrote a letter to the students at Lumbira, to help build a connection between the two schools. If you would like to participate in a future letter exchange, please speak with the either Miss Nicholson, or the members of Culture Club.
CTK Staff have also donated books to be sent to Lumbira to build their library, and the next fundraising events will be focused on raising money to ship these books to the school. Culture Club will also have a food stall available at the next CTK Spring Fair.
From the hard work and fundraising, CTK have helped the Lumbira School purchase portable chairs, so students can work both inside the classroom and outside, as well as repairing the rain damaged roof.
We hope this partnership continues well into the future, and keep your eyes peeled to our Social Media to find out more about the next fundraising events.
Lumbira Gallery
On the last day of term, Friday 22nd December, students attended our annual Christmas Liturgy at The Church of the Good Shepherd, where we were joined by Father Phillip.
We spent the afternoon listening to the prophecies hearing scriptures around Jesus’ birth. We also had the opportunity to sing Christmas Carols and reflect on our year.
During the Liturgy, we heard the following –
“When Jesus was born, he brought a new light to the people in darkness. He walked among the people. Teaching, healing and performing miracles. Ultimately, he sacrificed himself for us. We are called to be the light to the nations, to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and be the light to the world.”
We then invited students to close their eyes, and think of someone to pray for. With this person in mind, they waved their glowsticks for the whole church to see the light that they bring to the world.
Thank you to our Chaplaincy Team, our Chaplain Charles and Mrs Harvey and the CTK band for making this Christmas Liturgy a fantastic services for everyone.
As a Chaplaincy Team we have launched our weekly Faith Focus Videos. These reflect on the School theme of the week and are based on a piece of scripture. They include a time to respond to the scripture and a weekly mission we can carry out. These are spoken about on the following week to see how they’ve been lived out. These videos support form time prayer and we hope your children will discuss what they’ve heard with you at home.
On the 7th – 8th June 2023, The Catholic Schools Inspectorate inspected our school.
Upon completion of the inspection, the Catholic Schools Inspectorate concluded that Christ the King is a Good Catholic school.
To view the full report, please click the link below:
Last term, 57 students in Year 8 went to The Briars for a week where they spent time forming as community, praying, and taking part in activities to enhance their faith.
We continue with our monthly 1st Friday of the month mass, and we had the addition of the Ascension Day last month, so we had a voluntary Mass to celebrate. We have started two lunchtime prayer
groups, Adoration on a Monday, and Lectio Devina on a Thursday from 12:45.
We also said goodbye to our Year 13’s and Year 11’s with leavers liturgies.
This term we look forward to the diocesan Lourdes pilgrimage where we are taking 6 young people from Year 11- 6th form for the first time since 2019. If you have any prayer intentions that you would like us to take to the Grotto, then please contact Lucy or Charles.
We are heading down to Good Shepherd Church on the feast day of St Peter and Paul to celebrate Mass as a whole school – look out for the link to watch online!
Mass and lunchtime prayers will continue through to the end of the year so please keep coming down and spending time in the Chapel.
As we are both full time, either Charles or Lucy will always be in the Chapel, so we encourage you to come and see us anytime. Take care and we hope you have a great final half term!
Lucy & Charles
Last term saw the launch of our Mission Champions. Each tutor group has chosen a Mission Champion. All Houses are leading a project in order to follow Catholic Social Teaching and the importance of caring for others. This may be focused on a charity or raising awareness about something that is important for the care of others and themselves.
Each House has their own project that was suggested in form time and agreed on in the Mission Champion House group. Their chosen projects are:
Canterbury– Autism Awareness Day and Tourette’s Awareness Day
Holywell – Equality for all, focus on equality for women
Lindisfarne – Cancer research and care for the environment
Iona – Raise awareness and funds for Ukraine, Raise awareness of Mental Health
Walsingham – Black Lives Matter, Raise money for Turkey/Syria disaster
Lenten Pledges
Our focus this term is obviously on our Lenten pledges. We will spend time in prayer on Ash Wednesday asking our students to focus their thoughts on how we can take part in the three challenges of Lent to pray, fast and give to others.
Pray
Students will be given the opportunity during form Acts of Worship to reflect on the stations of the cross. These are prayerful reflections on Jesus’ journey to the cross. Staff and students in school have recorded these prayers and they will be made available on the website for any parents who would like to join us in these prayerful moments. You can take a look at our School prayers by clicking here.
Fast
Students are being encouraged to give something up during Lent to share in Jesus’ experience in the desert at the start of his ministry. We are encouraging them to think about how fasting doesn’t have to mean going without, it can also be a commitment to do more for those around them.
Give to others
There will be several fundraising events taking place this half term, including a non-uniform day, cake sales and much more. We encourage students to do what they can to support these events.
