Archbishop Vigneron's visit to southwest Detroit school for Catholic Schools Week 'meant a lot' to students, principal says
DETROIT — Cristo Rey High School in southwest Detroit welcomed a special visitor — Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron — on Jan. 29 to celebrate Catholic Schools Week and bless a newly installed mural in the school's chapel.
Archbishop Vigneron blessed the mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe and her Son raising their arms to cover various saints in the Church with her mantle, painted by Cristo Rey theology teacher Jeremy Alexander.
The archbishop blessed the chapel and mural before proceeding to the school basement, where he held an impromptu question-and-answer session with the students on the importance of Catholic schools, vocational discernment and what it means to give Christian witness in an increasingly secular world.
Archbishop Vigneron said the purpose of Cristo Rey High School, and all Catholic schools, is to prepare young people to take up the vocation God is calling them to fulfill.
“School is for a purpose,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “You didn’t come here to be here, you came here to pass on to something else. You didn’t go to kindergarten just to stay there; you got there to go to first grade and so on. This isn’t an end in itself."
Addressing a student's question about how Catholic schools can help students progress along their journey, the archbishop used a baking analogy.
“I read recently this little way of putting it: it’s about leaven, not icing," he said. "Leaven is what you put in the dough, and it impacts everything that’s going on. Icing is a layer on top that is just one more addition. The leaven in our school is an understanding of what it means to be a human being, and what we are about in life.”
Archbishop Vigneron asked the students to raise their hands if they were planning on attending college or serving in the military or in the trades. The archbishop said the classes students take at Cristo Rey — literature, geometry, chemistry — will help them pursue those options.
But the purpose of Cristo Rey, the reason for its existence, he said, is to prepare students to pursue their vocations.
“What we understand in our form of education as Catholics is we are all called to a vocation,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “For most of you, your real vocation in life is about the families you will establish. For some of you, it is to be a priest, or a brother or a sister. But for all of us, the real vocation in our lives is to become a saint.”
During the Q&A session, Cristo Rey students asked the archbishop a variety of questions — what his daily schedule looks like, how he confronts the challenges he faces as an archbishop, and his advice for young people facing challenges keeping their faith in a secular world.
Students from Cristo Rey's Stranger No Longer Circle of Support, a student group supporting the rights of immigrants, read aloud a letter from the group to the archbishop, thanking him and other Catholic bishops in Michigan for their recent statement of support for the rights and dignity of migrants living and working in the state.
Cristo Rey president Chris Lynch said it was meaningful for students at Cristo Rey — a school with a majority Hispanic student population — to see Archbishop Vigneron engage with them, hear their concerns and reassure them of his pastoral support for the community.
"It meant a lot,” Lynch told Detroit Catholic. “The archbishop’s willingness to hear and recognize (the students' concerns) and focus in on the dignity of each human person and even take on what the students were asking, it was incredible to see. I really appreciated the way our students articulated their concerns in such a way that the archbishop heard their voices and thought of a way to respond in shepherding his flock.”
Archbishop Vigneron’s visit to Cristo Rey to bless the chapel mural and hear from students is a way for Cristo Rey to “be seen” during Catholic Schools Week, Lynch said.
Lynch said he often hears Cristo Rey is the “best kept secret in Detroit” — something he hopes will change as the school's innovative programs, such as its groundbreaking corporate work-study program, become better known.
Lynch said more people need to hear about Cristo Rey and how its students’ impact is felt far and wide across the archdiocese, particularly through the student-worker program, in which Cristo Rey students venture out to area companies to gain work experience and to help cover the cost of tuition.
Lynch saw firsthand the impact Cristo Rey students had in the workplace in his former position at Continental Automotive Systems in Auburn Hills.
“We are a beacon,” Lynch said, noting Cristo Rey is the only co-ed Catholic high school in the city of Detroit. “When you talk about evangelization and reaching out, a major component of Cristo Rey is our students going out once a week to companies to help pay for tuition. They go out all across the Metro Detroit area, as far west as Milford, as far north as Auburn Hills. I myself was an employer-partner way back when, and I remember our students create a better environment in the places they go off to work.”
Hosting Archbishop Vigneron for an afternoon of discussion about vocations, hopes, dreams, fears and challenges made discipleship real for Cristo Rey's students, Lynch said — an impact that will last far beyond Catholic Schools Week.
“My impression today was that our students felt heard; they felt a sense of dignity,” Lynch said. “The archbishop heard their voices, expressed the way they wanted to express their concerns, their real fears, and he responded to them as a good shepherd. It was impactful because they felt some level of support, love and encouragement they might not have been feeling before. The timing could not have been better.”
Share Your Connection to Catholic Schools
During Catholic Schools Week, the Archdiocese of Detroit's Department of Catholic Schools invites parents, alumni, teachers, faculty and others to share their connection to Catholic education by taking a few moments to complete this brief survey and help us shape a bright future.
