The Scottish Catholic Education Service would like to thank everyone in schools and parishes throughout Scotland, as well as colleagues in England, for all their efforts to celebrate the Papal Visit.  We realise that this has involved very considerable efforts by many people in recent weeks.  We are sure that all this work will pay huge dividends in the interest and excitement of young people over the next few days.

We hope that you have found the SCES website to be a useful source of information on various aspects of the visit. 

As anticipated, there was a huge amount of media interest and coverage of the various events.   With the support of Learning & Teaching Scotland, we hope to be able to capture some of this coverage and to offer it as a learning resource in the future. 

We also hope that schools have recorded their own activities on digital photos or video which they will be willing to share with colleagues on the SCES website.  To find out how to do this, read this item.   Please send us some stories and photographs.

Before the visit, our prayer was that everyone would be able to enjoy a very joyful few days ‘in the company of’ Pope Benedict XVI.  We thank God that so many people across the UK were able and willing to offer a warm welcome and open hearts and minds to greet the successor of Peter.