A New Jesuit School in Brussels: Going to the Periphery

Abstract

One of the key themes of Pope Francis’ Papacy is his call to go to the periphery. For Catholic schools, this includes opening new schools to serve those who are disadvantaged. Opening a new school is however not a trivial matter. And opening a new Jesuit school in a small country like Belgium that already has 16 other Jesuit schools is even less trivial. Still, this was the intention of the initiators of the Matteo Ricci College in Brussels, Belgium’s capital city, when they got together in 2012 to set up this project. As former students of the Collège Saint-Michel, a long-standing and large Jesuit high-school in Brussels, they were aware of the need for new schools in the Belgian capital due to sustained demographic growth in this cosmopolitan and multicultural city. This article tells the story of the creation of the college, and its emphasis in serving children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a number of pedagogical innovations.