“From the Archives” — Saint Mary School in the New York Times

When Pope John Paul II visited New Orleans in September 1987, he met with Catholic educators and attended a rally with 75,000 young people in the Superdome. In its coverage of the visit, The New York Times included a large article, “Catholic School: Unchanged Values,” featuring our Saint Mary Parochial School as an exemplar of these values. Principal Mary Davis, a Saint Mary alumnus and the school’s first lay principal, was interviewed. She stressed that for 120 years “…our key purpose is to lead the children to Christ and make their lives Christ-centered.”

The Times article addressed the challenges facing Catholic schools in the late 20th century, including the rapidly diminishing number of religious sisters to teach in the schools, noting that only three Holy Cross Sisters were still teaching at Saint Mary. Catholic schools also faced the increasing cost of hiring lay teachers and the need to incorporate modern technology and expensive computers. In addition, Catholic parents (often from immigrant families) felt “comfortable and accepted in society, and pretty much Americanized,” so they more readily sent their children to public schools. One response was to these challenges was to enroll more children of other faiths, whose parents recognized the quality of Catholic schools. Saint Mary accepted a large number of children from Bolling Air Force Base in Southeast Washington, DC, to help fill its vacancies.

When the Pope visited this country in 1987, Saint Mary School had 380 students. Today, the enrollment is 741. Obviously, many parents recognize the quality of an up-to-date Catholic education that stresses Christian values and seeks to lead their children to Chris— Kitty Guy, Parish Historian