![]() “It’s really a unique thing, and we’re all sad to be losing it.” “There is not another school that is equivalent around here the other private schools cost way more or have much bigger class sizes,” Wentzell said. ![]() Wentzell, who attended a private Catholic school in Wisconsin, has two children at St. I’m surprised they didn’t see that as well.” Rita’s school board, said, “It’s purely a financial decision, but the school is so much more than that. “But they rejected the loan, saying they do not loan money to schools,” Black said.Īaron Wentzell, president of St. Black said that if the school closes, the money in the endowment reverts to the archdiocese. The school proposed using a $120,000 endowment that the archdiocese manages for it as collateral for the loan. By the end of this school year, the $700,000 will have been spent.īlack said the school asked the archdiocese to consider loaning it money to cover a deficit, if declining enrollment were to cause a shortfall next year. Much of the money raised during that period came from two anonymous donors one donated $250,000, the other $200,000. Rita School at the end of the 2013 school year, but school families and parishioners raised nearly $700,000 to cover the school’s deficit spending and convinced Cordileone to keep the school open for at least two more years. The archbishop initially announced plans to close St. In addition, about a third of the students receive financial aid, which costs the archdiocese close to $75,000 a year. This year the deficit will amount to $200,000, Black said. The school, which has 110 students, has been running a deficit for years, mainly due to declining enrollment. “The parishioners who are older are especially angry because some of them were here helping to build the school 57 years ago others went to the school, graduated, got married, had children and those children went to our school - so the school is a very central part of our parish community.” “The response of the parishioners was one of anger, disappointment, and frustration,” Weare said. Rita Church parishioners were informed of the archbishop’s decision on Sunday. “I’m going to try my best to convince him to reverse his decision,” Weare said. Rita Church, will meet with Cordileone on Thursday morning in one final bid to change his mind. Rita Church mounted a furious campaign to preserve the Catholic school from a previously planned closure. The news comes two years after school parents and parishioners of St. Rita School in Fairfax at the end of this school year because of financial problems. She is the patron saint of impossible causes, sterility, abuse victims, loneliness, marriage difficulties, parenthood, widows, the sick, bodily ills and wounds.Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has decided to close St. Rita was canonized in 1900 by Pope Leo XIII. On the 100th anniversary of her canonization in 2000, Pope John Paul II noted her remarkable qualities as a Christian woman: “Rita interpreted well the 'feminine genius' by living it intensely in both physical and spiritual motherhood.” She died of tuberculosis at the age of 70 on May 22, 1456. ![]() Rita was bedridden for the last four years of her life, consuming almost nothing except for the Eucharist. Augustine, Mary Magadalene and John the Baptist and was finally allowed to enter the convent where she lived the last 40 years of her life in prayer, mortification and service to the people of Cascia.įor the last 15 years of her life she received a stigmata-like thorn wound in answer to her prayers to be more profoundly conformed to the passion of the Lord Jesus. The saint heard the call to become a nun in the Augustinian convent at Cascia, but was refused entry at first. ![]() ![]() She was granted this grace, and her sons, who died young, died reconciled to God. He was murdered 18 years later and she forgave his murderers, praying that her twin sons, who had sworn to avenge their father’s death may also forgive. Rita was married at the age of 12 to a violent and ill-tempered husband. She is invoked by people in all situations and stations of life, since she had embraced suffering with charity and wrongs with forgiveness in the many trials she experienced in her life: as a wife, widow, a mother surviving the death of her children, and a nun.īorn in 1386 in Roccaparena, Umbria, St. Rita has become immensely popular throughout the centuries. Known in Spain as “La Santa de los impossibiles” (the saint of the impossible), St. Rita of Cascia, who the late John Paul II called “a disciple of the Crucified One” and an “expert in suffering.” On May 22, the Church celebrates the feast day of St. ![]()
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