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Salesianum strives to foster diversity and inclusion in all facets of our community. While proud of our history as the first Delaware school to racially integrate in 1950, we also recognize that coming together was only a beginning. As a Catholic school, we believe every human being possesses the dignity of being made in God’s image. Exposing students, faculty, and staff to a wide range of ideas, experiences, and cultures, examining preconceptions, and exploring different ways of thinking enrich the learning experience and reflect the school’s mission to Live Jesus. God calls us to form a welcoming, supportive, and healthy community that fosters brotherhood, embraces differences, and promotes respect for each individual. Preparing our graduates for lives of faith and service in a diverse world is at the heart of our educational mission to form students morally and intellectually as Salesian Gentlemen.
Our ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion is therefore a non-negotiable component of our Catholic and Salesian identity. Our patron, Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, displayed his characteristic optimism and gentleness regarding diversity and the human condition when he wrote the following:
“God, like a printer, has given existence to all the different creatures which have been, are, or shall be, by one single stroke of his all-powerful will. From His idea, as from a well-cut plate, he draws this marvelous distinction of persons and other things that succeed one another in seasons, ages, and times, each one in its order as they were destined to be. This supreme unity of the divine act is opposed to confusion and disorder, but not to distinction and variety. On the contrary, it employs these last two to bring forth beauty by reducing all difference and diversity to proportion, proportion to order and order to the unity of the world, which comprises all created things, both visible and invisible. All these together are called the universe, perhaps because all their diversity is reduced to unity, as if one were to say unidiverse, that is, unique and diverse, unique along with diversity and diversity along with unity.” (Treatise on the Love of God, Book II.)
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