Diocese to host its first CACE annual meeting

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The Most Rev. Gerald Kicanas, bishop of Tucson, will speak on “Empowering Leaders for a Changing World” at the 2009 CACE annual meeting.

SALT LAKE CITY — About 275 Catholic educators will be in Utah for four days next week for the annual Chief Administrators of Catholic Education meeting. This is the first time the Diocese of Salt Lake City has hosted the event.

“I think it’s an opportunity for us to show our Catholic culture that is here,” said Holy Cross Sister Catherine Kamphaus, superintendent of Utah Catholic Schools. “It shows off that we have a larger Catholic population than anybody thinks about. It takes away a little bit of the stereotype of Utah.”

Each school in the diocese is involved in some way, she added. The diocese is responsible for the daily prayers and liturgies; some students also are making cards for the packets. The event will start Sunday with committee meetings and a Mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine officiated by the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

The meeting will feature three general sessions as well as daily breakout sessions. The Most Rev. Gerald Kicanas, bishop of Tucson, will open Monday’s general session. Bishop Kicanas is the vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Pastoral Life Center and chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. He holds a doctoral degree in educational psychology and a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Loyola University. Bishop Kicanas’ topic will be “Empowering Leaders for a Changing World.”

Utah author Margaret Wheatley will give Wednesday’s keynote address, titled “Leadership in Turbulent Times is Spiritual.”

Sr. Catherine said she’s excited to hear Wheatley speak because she’s read the author’s books. Wheatley’s message, she said, is, “If people could just learn to talk and listen to one another, we could change the world. You don’t change big things. You change the things around you and then that builds out and out.”

Bishop Wester will present the closing session with a presentation on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Now More than Ever.”

The meeting is an opportunity for CACE members to network as well as attend sessions on different areas of interest, Sr. Catherine said.

Prior to the meeting, about 25 Catholic school superintendents will meet for two days in the Skaggs Center, she added. “They asked to go out there because it’s such a highlight to see this big school place, and they just never think that that would be in Utah.”