Students from five Central Catholic League high schools gathered on Sunday, Jan. 14 at Columbus Bishop Ready High School for a collaborative event to foster the legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The second annual MLK Day of Engagement: United Faith and Justice brought together students from Bishop Ready, St. Charles Preparatory School, and Columbus St. Francis DeSales, Bishop Watterson and Bishop Hartley high schools who heard presentations from students and talks by Father Kyle Tennant, the chaplain at Bishop Ready, and Andrea Pannell, vice president of stewardship for The Catholic Foundation.
The students chose various aspects of Catholic social teachings to make presentations in a science fair-style format that, according to organizers, were intended to “channel the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and our shared faith to create lasting change within our schools and communities.
Pannell’s talk focused on how “Christians and Catholics can actively contribute to positive change in our broader community … motivating us all to be agents of compassion and transformation.”
The MLK Day of Engagement was organized by Taron Slone, student development coordinator and assistant director of admissions at Bishop Ready, and Darrien Scott, director of diversity and student equity at DeSales, and was held the day before a national holiday in the United States in honor of King, a pastor and civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1968.
DeSales principal Dan Garrick said in a post on the school’s social media that he was gratified to see Scott and the students at the event “to identify ways that we can more fully live our faith in service to others.”
“As Father Tennant so powerfully stated yesterday, social justice is rooted in God’s love for us,” Garrick continued, “a love that we are called to share with our brothers and sisters especially those who have been impacted by injustice and marginalized.”