Catholic Schools

With new school supplies and backpacks in tow, students across the Diocese of Trenton disembarked buses or walked alongside parents as they returned to school the week of Sept. 4, where they were greeted warmly by principals and teachers.

In St. James Grammar School, Red Bank, kindergarten teacher Kira Nelsen grinned as she welcomed students back to school. She said she was happy to meet her new students and see their smiling faces.

For Trenton Catholic Academy senior Angie Labissiere, attending The Catholic University of America, Washington, and receiving the Most Reverend David M. O’Connell Service Scholarship is a dream come true.

“I truly feel privileged to be chosen as the winner of the Bishop O’Connell Service Scholarship. Being able to attend college is a dream that I’ve always longed for,” the Hamilton school student said. 

“The fact that this scholarship is solely based on service means so much to me because service is a major part of my life. I owe all my blessings to the different service projects I have been a part of; they all played a huge part in breaking me out of my comfort zone and shaping me into the person I am today.”

“Children of the light.”

Those were the words Father John Bambrick used to describe the pews full of kindergarten through eighth-grade students from St. Aloysius School, Jackson, who gathered for Mass Feb. 2 at the end of Catholic Schools Week.

Students from around the state gathered Feb. 1 at the State House in Trenton to celebrate the many contributions made by Catholic schools and to recognize the standouts of the annual Catholic Schools Week poster and video project.

Sponsored by the New Jersey Network of Catholic Families and the New Jersey Catholic Conference, the day included a tour of the State House and a presentation of the selected poster and video entries that depicted, “Why I Love My Catholic School.”

“Each of us are given grace and called to follow the Gospels in our own lives, not just me because I’m a nun,” Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille Helen Prejean told an overflow audience in the Christian Brothers Academy, Lincroft, auditorium Feb.1.

Sister Helen, a 78-year-old Baton Rouge native, held the more than 950 students and guests spellbound for her talk on social justice during the celebration of Catholic Schools Week at the secondary school. 

What children aspire to become depends on many factors, not the least of which is the adults to whom they’re exposed. In St. Peter School, Point Pleasant Beach, educators are making sure some of that exposure includes people living a religious vocation.

As pipes and drums played a marching tune, more than 1,000 students, parents, teachers and administrators careened down the sloping and rather soggy sands in back of Sea Bright’s Donovan’s Reef Jan. 28 and into the rolling sea.

“Everyone had a good time,” said Eugenia Kelly, pastoral assistant in Holy Cross Parish, Rumson. “There were so many schools; their flags were flying; there were pipers and all the kids. It was really a special start to the week.”

For one special week each year, Catholic schools in the Diocese of Trenton join others nationwide in a unique celebration of all that make these institutions of faith and learning remarkable.

Catholic Schools Week, running from Jan. 28 through Feb. 3, is a time for schools to highlight their academic excellence, spirit of service, leadership, community and discipleship, and their continuum of faith formation that prepares students to make a difference in their world.

Flip through The Monitor’s annual salute to Catholic schools, which published Jan. 25.

It has been full STEAM ahead this year for many of our Catholic schools in the Diocese of Trenton as STEM education has enhanced classroom lessons in the elementary and high schools.

Each month, Marybeth Fondonella, fifth-grade teacher at St. Dominic School, Brick, ushers her 27 students to the second-grade classroom of Kathleen Gaspich, where the two classes engage in a 20-minute activity including prayer, a craft and plenty of camaraderie.

The two classes are part of a program known as Prayer Partners, in which a fifth-grader serves as a mentor to a younger child.

The sense of unity that’s a hallmark of the Catholic Schools Mass gains a truly global perspective from the traditional pre-Mass presentation on the Church’s mission fields.

This year’s program, featuring a talk by Father Evarist Kabagambe, who hails from Uganda, capped by a procession of cultural and religious symbols from around the world, perfectly exemplified that.

Leaving no doubt about the importance of faith in the lives of young people, Bishop David M. O'Connell, C.M., opened his homily at the annual Catholic Schools Mass Oct. 12 with a focus on how three children served as messengers of conversion and peace for the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima.