Flag Ceremony celebrates Woodlands Academy's cultural diversity
The Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart community gathered to celebrate its multicultural makeup during the annual Flag Ceremony and Mass of the Holy Spirit Friday, Sept. 7, at the all-girls college-prep high school in Lake Forest.
The flags of 19 nations were carried into the chapel during the Procession of the Nations and will remain on display during the entire school year as a visualization of the breadth of Woodlands Academy's cultural diversity. They represent nations where either a student or faculty/staff member was born or where they hold dual citizenship.
"One of the many blessings that we have at Woodlands Academy is the richness of our cultural diversity," Global Education Director Amy Perlick said at the beginning of the Mass.
"This is one of the many forms of diversity which Sacred Heart schools seek and cherish. For, as our knowledge and experience of new cultures and peoples expand and deepen, we come to more fully understand ourselves, our world and our global interconnectedness."
In her Call to Worship, junior Andrea Pulaski of Waukegan expressed the hope that "this Mass will bring us together as we explore the differences of our backgrounds as we come together as one community."
Students and faculty/staff representing 12 countries also offered prayers in their native language during the ceremony.
"This is very much the educational vision of Sacred Heart Schools, as articulated by the foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, who said, 'To influence our world we must understand it,'" Perlick said.
The Rev. Matt O' Donnell of St. Columbanus Church in Chicago presided over the Mass and commissioned eight seniors as student Eucharistic ministers for the 2018-19 school year: Grace Allen and Paige Bartusiak of Lake Forest; Kathryn Bettuzzi of Park Ridge; Erin Bowler of Lake Bluff; Christa Ingabire of Kigali City, Rwanda; Genevieve Makowski of Arlington Heights; Xitali Ochoa of Waukegan; and Mary Clare Scalise of Glencoe.