When the saints go marching in … at school!
Children from kindergarten through second grade at the Basilica School of St. Mary in Alexandria, Virginia, held their annual Little Saints Parade for All Saints’ Day. Dressed as saints, the children processed through their school and neighborhood, led by priests. The children enthusiastically identified their chosen saints, including St. Andrew, St. Bernadette, and Carlo Acutis.
5 hours ago
Children from kindergarten through second grade at the Basilica School of St. Mary in Alexandria, Virginia, celebrated All Saints’ Day with a parade dressed as saints. The event highlighted the children’s enthusiasm and introduced them to the idea that saints came from many eras and walks of life. 1
For the school’s annual parade, pupils processed through the school and into the neighborhood, led by priests. Their costumes included religious habits, halos and robes, while the children proudly announced their chosen saints—including St. Andrew and St. Bernadette. 1
One child portrayed Carlo Acutis in jeans, a soccer jersey and sneakers, a simple outfit reflecting the modern saint’s contemporary image. 1
The article presents the parade as more than a costume event: it gives children a chance to encounter saints as people who lived in different times and circumstances. It suggests that the young participants may, in turn, inspire future generations. 1
The article also points to a separate video from France, featuring a child dressed as St. Theodore in a bishop’s outfit. Though fond of the saint, the child says he hopes to become a fighter pilot rather than join the clergy. 1*
Catholic education forms children through the communion of saints
Catholic education forms children not only by teaching them about holiness, but by placing them within a living communion of faith: the Church on earth, the faithful who have died, and the saints who show what a life given to God can become. The communion of saints therefore offers children both a larger sense of belonging and concrete examples for how to live. A school can make this vision visible when its teaching and its common life are shaped by prayer, faithful witness, and relationships of charity.
The Congregation for Catholic Education describes the saints as those who have believed in Christ and spent their lives in his service. It also stresses that the Church calls many “saints” even if they have not been formally recognized or publicly venerated under that title. Mary has a unique place among them, and the faithful who have died are not separated from the Church on earth: together they belong to the one People of God, united in the communion of saints.
For children, this means holiness is not an abstract ideal reserved for distant or extraordinary figures. The saints’ lives can help them imagine what courage, mercy, fidelity, and service look like in practice. And the communion of saints widens their sense of family: those who have died are not simply erased from Christian life, but remain in communion with the Church. The Congregation connects these beliefs with a child’s sense of human dignity, Christian hope amid difficulty, and responsibility for one’s actions before God.
A school cannot form children for communion merely by explaining the idea. The Congregation teaches that the Catholic school’s community life is itself educational: relationships among its members convey values, and the community’s witness can teach students how to live together. In this sense, the school’s everyday culture can help children understand communion not just as a doctrine to repeat, but as a way of belonging and acting.
That formation depends on the conduct of adults as well as their lessons. Teachers and others in the school community educate through their words and their behaviour; the Congregation calls witness—faith lived in a way that others can see—central to education in the faith. A school that speaks of the saints but tolerates contempt or exclusion undermines its own lesson. One that practices patience, welcome, forgiveness, and service gives children an everyday glimpse of the kind of communion it teaches.
The communion of saints does not teach that each person is isolated in working out a life of faith. In a Catholic school, educators with different vocations contribute to a shared mission, and the variety of their callings can itself teach children that people serve God in different ways. Their example may help students consider their own lives as a vocation—a path shaped by listening, commitment, and choices.
This communal vision is not meant to make children passive admirers of holy people. The Church’s educational guidance joins hope with responsibility: children are taught that human life has enduring dignity, that hope can sustain them in hardship, and that their actions matter. To learn about saints, then, is also to ask how their virtues might shape one’s own treatment of classmates, family members, and neighbours.
A school celebration in which children dress as saints can be more than a festive activity if it helps them encounter holiness as a real Christian calling. It can make saints visible and memorable, while opening discussion about the virtues their lives exemplify. The educational value, however, lies not only in the costumes or event; it depends on whether the wider school community helps children connect those examples with daily conduct and a shared life of faith. The Congregation’s account of Catholic education emphasizes that formation occurs across the school’s activities and relationships, not in classroom instruction alone.
In this way, Catholic education forms children through the communion of saints by teaching that they belong to a people extending beyond themselves and their own time, by presenting models of faithful life, and by asking them to practice communion in the present. The saints are not only subjects to study: they are part of the Church’s shared story, and their witness points children toward lives of hope, service, and responsibility.