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CV NEWS FEED // The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C., has awarded the Archdiocese of Saint Paul-Minneapolis with Lumen Accreditation for its 90 Catholic schools, the first such distinction in the country.
CUA President Peter Kilpatrick presented the accreditation certificate to St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop Bernard Hebda at Ave Maria Academy in Maple Grove on October 3. With other representatives of CUA and the Archdiocese, Kilpatrick and Archbishop Hebda visited and toured both Ave Maria Academy and St. John Paul II Catholic School in Minneapolis.
The accreditation ceremonies came after Lumen Accreditation and other Catholic educational institutions completed a recent onsite visit to the archdiocese.
Lumen Accreditation is granted by a CUA initiative called the Institute for the Transformation of Catholic Education (ITCE). The Institute chronicles on its website that in 2016, following a year-long analysis of CUA’s educational programs aimed at identifying ways of more directly supporting PK-12 Catholic education, consultants recommended the founding of an institute for the purpose of promoting authentic Catholic education. In the winter of 2020 and spring of 2021, four Catholic Education Salons were held virtually and included participants from across the country.
The Executive Briefing of the Salons, published in the fall of 2021, states that in the meetings, Catholic educators “recognized that teachers and leaders must themselves first be deeply imbued with a knowledge and love of the Catholic faith in order to integrate it across the curriculum.”
The briefing noted that “discussion also centered on examples of successful leadership and governance in Catholic schools. One example provided was that of St. Jerome Academy in Hyattsville, Maryland, where a successful school turnaround took place through a grassroots initiative for curriculum renewal under the guidance of dedicated leadership.”
On its website, ITCE states its mission is to “foster a vision of education and formation that is rooted in Christ, draws from the great treasury of the Church’s tradition, and aims at the full flourishing of the human person in wisdom, virtue, and holiness. Highlighting its purpose of promoting authentically Catholic education, ITCE affirms that one of its guiding principles is fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church, stating, “We are faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ as handed on by the Church and affirm those teachings in all our programs and services.”
