Australian Prime Minister visits St Joseph's College,
Ferntree Gully
MELBOURNE: 31st October 2007 -- The current Australian
Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, visited St Joseph's College in Ferntree
Gully, a Salesian school in Melbourne, on Monday 29 October. Mr Howard,
who is heading for a tough election in several week's time, used the
occasion to speak quite personally to students and staff of the
College, in addition to announcing 'significant funding' for skills and
technical education in Australia, should he be re-elected. The Prime
Minister congratulated the newly ordained Fr Brian Ahern sdb, a past
pupil of the College, expressing 'great admiration for a person who is
prepared to devote his life to the spiritual upliftment of the
community'. The visit included a politically star-studded lineup
of local and federal politicans. Mr Howard was accompanied by his wife
Jeanette.
The Prime Minister spoke of the values of Catholic
education as espoused and practised by St. Joseph's College: 'I wanted
to take just a moment to say to all of you how much I respect the
achievements of the Catholic education system....the quality of
education provided not only in a formal educational sense but also
through the spiritual guidance of young men and women in the Catholic
system is greatly to be admired'. He further urged students to 'listen
to the counsel and encouragement of your teachers. Teaching is a
wonderful dedicated profession because the impact of teachers on young
lives ranks only second to the impact of parents on young lives'.
Obviously well informed on the history of St
Joseph's College, the Prime Minster congratulated the school and in
particular its principal, Mr Vincent Feeney, for the way in which it
had 'embraced the need for change and modernisation whist preserving
the best traditions of a Catholic education'. He commented on his
own insistence as Prime Minister on the importance of understanding the
history of one's culture and society. It was a point well-taken
by Mr Feeney who, as a Salesian lay educational leader, has recently
returned from a visit to Annecy and Piedmont with many other Australian
Salesian lay educational leaders.
The Prime Minister concluded with a personal
expression of good wishes to the College school captains, Simon and
Jarred, whom he saw as 'wonderful young men who go into the world and
make a rounded contribution to making a stronger and better Australian
nation'. _________________ AustraLasia is an
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Rome.
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