As you know we have a new science lab in the school. This effort was in the making for the better part of a year. We committed the proceeds from the 2016 Carnival to the construction of the lab and that proved to be enough to cover the costs. Principal Wallace researched design companies and we selected a design and the installation was completed over the summer. The students have been using the lab since school opened, but we have yet to have a formal dedication of the lab. Therefore, next Sunday, Father Gabriel Zeis, T.O.R., Diocesan Vicar for Education, will celebrate the 12:30 p.m. Mass and we will then proceed to the school for the blessing of the lab. Father Zeis might be known to some of you from prior assignments. He was chaplain at The College of New Jersey in the late nineties and early two-thousands, and then served as the President of St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He was been Vicar for Catholic Education since 2016. The school will be open after all Masses on Sunday so that any parishioner who desires to do so can tour the new lab. Unfortunately the work on the Art Room, which is next door to the lab, is not yet complete. That should happen, hopefully, before Christmas. That will be another blessing and open house opportunity.
On behalf of the school I want to thank all of you for your support and hope that you each take the opportunity to make a visit to see the lab.
In other school news, there is another project we undertook over the summer of a more spiritual note. On the initiative of Father Leon Buni icons of various saints were placed in the classrooms. Some of them were missing and others were in bad shape. Over the summer we removed all of them (many of which will find a new home in the church, but that’s for another column). Through a generous donation we were able to purchase new portraits of saints for each classroom, office, student space, and the wings in the school. Mrs. Joanne Mertz, art teacher of the school has undertaken the project of mounting them on wood along with a brief biography of each saint. These plaques will be mounted in the main hallway as a reminder to the students of our Catholic identity and to offer to each classroom a patron to whom to pray. These plaques will be blessed and hung on Wednesday morning after the All Saints Day Mass at 9:00 a.m.
Here is a list of the saints we are blessed to have:
St. Benedict, St. Scholastica, St. John Baptist de LaSalle, St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Theresa of Avila, -The Holy Family, St. Isidore of Seville, St. Louise DeMarilac, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Agatha, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Sebastian, St. Nicholas, St. Martha, St. Thomas More, St. Nicholas, St. Cecelia, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Luke, St. Augustine, St. Albert the Great, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, St. Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Bl. Lucy, St. Patrick, St. Dominic Savio, St. Joan of Arc, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Gemma, St. Bernadette, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare, St. John Neumann, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Terese of Lisieux, St. Martin dePorres, St. Josephine Bakhita, St. Paul, St. Agnes, St. Peter, St. Mary Magdalene.
Each of the classrooms has a statue of the Blessed Mother. Next we need to work on a proper crucifix for each classroom as many of them are either too small or missing all together.