Salt Lake City, Utah, Mar 9, 2019 / 04:50 am
A school district in Utah has issued an apology after a fourth-grade student was told by a teacher that he must remove the cross from his forehead on Ash Wednesday.
William McLeod, a student at Valley View Elementary School in Bountiful, Utah, arrived at school with ashes on his forehead in the shape of a cross, a custom for Catholics at the beginning of the Lenten season.
He told Fox 13 that he was the only pupil with ashes at the school. Other students were curious about them, he said, and he explained the Ash Wednesday custom when they asked.
But then McLeod says, his teacher Moana Patterson confronted him about the ashes, telling him they were inappropriate and that he needed to remove them.