Dr Ann Marie Mealey, Director of Catholic Mission, Leeds Trinity University.
Supporting our Catholic schools is something that Leeds Trinity University has included as a key strategic priority in our ‘Education for Hope’/ Catholic Mission Strategy. We take our connections with our Catholic schools very seriously and aspire to be of service, particularly through our Catholic mission, to both emerging and very established Catholic Multi-Academy Trusts throughout the UK but particularly those in the Regional Hub of Dioceses located in the North East of England.
The regional meetings are an important touch point for the university as they enable us to connect personally with Schools’ Commissioners and CMAT/CMAC CEOS and establish deeper connections. We also learn a great deal about what schools are doing to promotion mission and values but also to help everyone to achieve their full potential. Education for Hope is a motto that is used at Leeds Trinity to denote our mission as a Catholic university but also to send out the message that, since 1966, we are a place of higher learning that sees hope for everyone’s development, education and future. As Pope Francis has said, ‘ […] [t]he overall vision of the role of Catholic colleges and universities is “essential for a church that ‘goes forth’! All the more so because today we are not only living in a time of changes but are experiencing a true epochal shift, marked by a wide-ranging ‘anthropological’ and ‘environmental crisis.’ ” How Pope Francis has changed the mission for Catholic colleges and universities | National Catholic Reporter
In other words, the Catholic university should bring hope to a world of isolation, poverty, fracture, hopelessness and dark times. It should look outwards and determine where it can offer help and support. This is what we did at Leeds Trinity University recently when we attended the Regional Hub meeting at the Diocese of Leeds in January to share the ‘lessons learned’ from a pan-university consultation for our Catholic mission strategy. The key points were as follows:
- Key aspects of Inclusion Safety; Learner Safety; Contributor Safety; and Challenger Safety create a strong foundation for a culture of inclusion, innovation, and high performance’ and enable teams to contribute and challenge ideas around Catholic mission in safety. (Cf. LeaderFactor)
- Expertise in the Catholic theological tradition are needed at certain points in consultations on Catholic mission.
- The push- back is often not where it might have been assumed. Stay open to learning if you are leading the consultation.
- Creating a ‘blue work’ culture of innovation is vital. Blue work (as opposed to ‘red work’) includes innovation, the art of what is possible; involves more than the day job; commitment and drive to see the vision and embrace it fully. (Cf. Marquet)
- People can be inspired by the teaching of the Church and by Ex Corde Ecclesiae especially its stress on the need to ‘teach’ and ‘reawaken’ our sense of imagination for our vision, mission and values to bring about a more humane political and social world. (Cf. ECE)
- Making links with the raison d’être of Leeds Trinity and of Catholic mission for a university was inspiring for staff.
- Understanding that katholikos means (‘toward wholeness’) was a key moment for some staff as it meant that everyone can contribute to this mission.
- Human dignity and the common good as key lynch pins of the strategy. All can contribute to this too.
- Embracing an ethic of responsibility is key to success and inclusive mission: embracing ethics and Catholic Social Teaching principles.
- Coining a new motto for the university: ‘Education for Hope’ created an inspiring new start for the staff at LTU.
Our sharing of ‘lessons learned’ at the Regional Hub has led to working groups being created that will work on key themes to formulate a draft of a regional strategy for the CMATs and CMACs in the North East Hub. Sharing the lessons learned with CEOs has enabled us to spread the hope of Catholic mission strategies becoming more widely accepted and used as a mechanism to drive innovation. It will perhaps also help in a small way to ensure that our Catholic educational settings remain in tune with the need to be the living embodiment of mission and hope for everybody who interacts with them.
This links very much with the words of François Mabille, General Secretary of IFCU, in the latest IFCU newsletter: ‘the Catholic university cannot be a simple academic player among others’.
Because the Catholic university is sent out to do much more: ‘it is called upon to be a “choreographer of knowledge”, a place where disciplines engage in dialogue, where truth is sought in the light of the Gospel, and where leaders are trained to transform the world.’ (Mabille, IFCU newsletter, March 2025).
At Leeds Trinity University, we hope that our involvement with the Regional Hub and its attempts to draft a regional strategy will form part our university’s commitment to transform and sustain the leaders of the future and encourage the seeds of hope we need for a better world overall.
Dr Ann Marie Mealey, Leeds Trinity University, March 2025.