The Big Assembly

One of the highlights of Pope Benedict’s four day visit to the United Kingdom will be a meeting with thousands of children and teachers from Catholic schools across England, Wales and Scotland at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham, a suburb to the south west of London.
Vice-chair of the board at St Mary’s and director of the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales is Oona Stannard. She told Philippa Hitchen more about the ‘Big Assembly’, as the meeting with Pope Benedict has been dubbed….

“The Big Assembly involves over 4000 people, most of them children and students…..they’re drawn from Catholic schools across the three countries, England, Scotland and Wales …we’re really delighted that Andy Akinwolere who is a presenter of BBC’s Blue Peter, a very renowned programme, is going to be the Master of Ceremonies…it feels like a very family occasion and a kind of homecoming for all of us gathered around the Holy Father”

“St Mary’s has an Olympic running track and we’re the place where many Olympians train, so we’re expecting that in the warm-up to the Big Assembly the pupils are going to meet a number of really famous Olympians who have trained here. Sport is one of the ways in which the Big Assembly is interpreting our assembly theme from St John’s Gospel ‘I have come that you may have life and have it to the full’…”