Easter Drawing Contest 2022 winners

The great 19th-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky declared that beauty will save the world. Some years earlier, Our Lord anticipated — and no doubt inspired — Dostoyevsky by teaching us the necessity for salvation of experiencing the world and expressing our faith through the beauty in children’s eyes.

Here at The Catholic Register, we make it a key part of our journalistic mission to find and communicate beauty even in a fallen world, which is why at the joyous Christian seasons of Christmas and Easter we save some of our pages for art created by elementary school students as part of our twice-yearly drawing contest.

This year we received more than 100 entries for the Easter portion of the contest, all of them beautiful and obviously heartfelt images showing unique understanding of the Passion narrative, joyful creativity and above all love for Jesus Christ.

There are truly no firsts or lasts in the contest but in their human, all too human, fallibility the judges chose Isabella Samy, an eight-year-old Grade 3 student, to showcase our Grades 1-3 category, and Eliana Antar, a 10-year-old Grade 4 student to represent the Grades 4-6 category. Finally, we chose Rhianna John, 13 and a Grade 8 student, for our Grades 7-8 entries.

We were astonished to discover on checking that Rhianna was also chosen in her category for our Christmas and Easter contests last year. No wonder there was no doubt about featuring her impression of the Risen Lord on The Catholic Register cover this year.

Beauty will save the world but it also makes a powerful statement for a Catholic newspaper