Chloe is a senior at Magnificat High School in Cleveland, Ohio. This past year, she painted a mural in her school for a semester-long project in her junior theology class. She was inspired by the call we have as Catholics defined in Catholic Social Teaching to dismantle racism, so she created my mural with the intent to strengthen the Catholic Church’s voice against racism. The mural displays three African saints and two African American Catholic leaders who have causes for canonization. In addition, above the saints she painted constellations which each represent a specific area of systemic racism (housing, education, wealth, criminal justice, and healthcare). Her overall aim for the mural was to educate my school on the lives of these saints that aren’t widely known, and also raise school-wide awareness of the systemic racism that African Americans currently face in the United States. She is now currently continuing to create art that strives to bring our Church and our country closer to racial justice through representation and education about often underrepresented saints of color.
Ben Campion is a senior at Gonzaga College High School in Washington DC. He is an active member of the Peace Club and helped lead Gonzaga’s participation in the Climate Strike on Sept. 20th.
Arlin Téllez Martinez is a sophomore at Trinity Washington University, where she is a recipient of TheDream.US scholarship, created to give undocumented students access to higher education. She is double majoring in international relations and political science. As an undocumented immigrant from Hidalgo, Mexico, Arlin is passionate about her community and has held various leadership positions advocating and organizing from criminal justice and immigrant rights. She hopes to become an attorney and further her work around immigrant rights and prison abolition.