We have three school houses which are named after Saints:

St Maximilian:

LIVED: Maximilian Kolbe was born Raymund Kolbe on 8th January 1894 in Poland. His life was strongly influenced by a vision he had of the Virgin Mary when he was 12 years old.  In 1941, he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where in terrible circumstances he continued to work as a priest and offer solace to fellow inmates. When the Nazi guards selected 10 people to be starved to death in punishment, Kolbe volunteered to die in place of a stranger.

MISSION: he is probably best known as the Catholic priest who gave his life for another man in Auschwitz in an act of ultimate self-sacrifice. As a Franciscan friar, St. Maximilian eagerly spread the word of God. With the other friars, Saint Maximilian built a city in Poland dedicated to the Immaculata, Niepokalanów, where the friars toiled endlessly to spread the Gospel to all corners of the world.

ADVENTURES: Before World War 2, Kolbe was active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and directing several organisations and publications. Kolbe was active as a radio amateur with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities by reporting the truth. In 1939, the friary he supervised and founded near Warsaw provided shelter to Polish refugees, including Jews.

St Bakhita:

LIVED: Bakhita was born in 1869 in Sudan. She was kidnapped by slave traders at the age of seven; they gave her the name Bakhita, which means “lucky.” She died in 1947 in Italy.

MISSION: As a girl, Bakhita would look up at the moon and stars, resolving to serve their Master. Later in life, she devoted herself to promoting Catholic missions to Africa.

ADVENTURES: Many weeks after being kidnapped, Bakhita found herself at a slave market, chained to another girl her age. The girls passed long hours telling one another about their families and how they had been kidnapped. Before long, they were planning an escape.

St Teresa (aka Mother Teresa):

LIVED: Anjezë (Agnes) Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia; she joined the Sisters of Loretto in 1928, taking the name Teresa, after St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She died on September 5, 1997, in Calcutta, India.

MISSION: While on retreat in 1946, God gave her a special mission: “I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor.”

ADVENTURES: In 1948, Sister Teresa left the convent school where she had happily taught history and geography to girls from well-off families for fi ft een years. She moved into a nearby slum, and began teaching the children there, writing the alphabet in the dirt.