Drive-by parades continue as #ChurchNeverStops

The community of St. John Paul II Academy may be small, but it has a massive heart.

The high school, which opened two years ago and so far teaches just Grades 8 and 9, showed their support of local health care workers at Peace Arch Hospital April 30.

Principal Michel DesLauriers said nearly every family connected with the school came out for a 30-car drive-by parade (with an RCMP escort), the singing of O Canada, and plenty of cheering for frontline workers with bells and handmade signs.

“It was an opportunity to celebrate community and to demonstrate to the students the importance of gratitude and self-sacrifice,” he said.

The newly established St. John Paul II Academy is temporarily headquartered at Star of the Sea Parish centre while the actual school is built. It’s expected the campus will be ready for the 2021-2022 school year.

Meanwhile, monks from Westminster Abbey paid a visit to parishes that are home to some of the junior seminarians from Seminary of Christ the King.

Seminary rector Father Peter Nygren and the monks, as well as a few students still living at the abbey, set up in fields and parking lots to play Taize music and to say hello to some of the students they haven’t seen since schools closed in March.