“The diocese is very grateful to the young student who used the situation to educate his teacher about a part of his faith and its importance to him,” a spokeswoman said. “Learning about one another is one way we build community across religious, political, racial, ethnic and other borders.”
Moana Patterson, at left, a teacher at Valley View Elementary in Bountiful, Utah, appears at a March 11, 2019, news conference, where she told reporters she never would have asked her student, William McLeod, to wash off the ashes on his forehead if she had known they were a sacred religious symbol. She is pictured with two members of the Utah Legislature, Republican Rep. Ray Ward and Republican Sen. Todd Weiler, and Tiffany Ivins-Spence, the mother of a student in Patterson's class. (CNS photo/Linda Petersen, Intermountain Catholic)
