Cardinal Timothy Dolan paid a pastoral visit to St. Mary’s School in Wappingers Falls on Wednesday, celebrating a Catholic educational institution that reopened in 2023. 

“This isn’t just about reopening a school, it’s also about innovating,” he told The Good Newsroom during a Dutchess County Catholic Schools Week stop. 

After celebrating Mass at the neighboring Church of St. Mary, Cardinal Dolan received a handmade welcome sign presented by the school’s first and second graders, before blessing a crucifix and taking a tour of the classrooms and facilities. 

Archdiocese of New York Auxiliary Bishop Gerardo Colacicco, the pastor of St. Mary’s, called the 2018 closure of the school, which was founded in 1893, “traumatic” for the parish and its community. However, through an inventive partnership with the Wappingers Central School District, the school was able to reopen to serve the area’s Catholic and non-Catholic children with Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) and Universal Pre-Kindergarten for three-year-olds (U3K). “We had the desire [to reopen], but we needed the catalyst,” Bishop Colacicco told The Good Newsroom. 

Using the school’s physical facilities and resources from the school district, such as special needs teachers, St. Mary’s can provide what Bishop Colacicco called “an unapologetically Catholic environment.”  

The school underwent a significant renovation before reopening, getting a new roof, new lights, and a new heating system, the latter installed under the generous auspices of St. Mary’s alumnus and community member Mark Bottini. 

Beyond UPK, the school now has students enrolled in traditional Catholic education programs in grades one and two, and a multi-age system where older students at different grade levels share instruction space.  

A final pastoral visit, a school’s new beginning 

Joining Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Colacicco on their tour of the facilities was Sister Mary Grace Walsh, ASCJ, Ph.D., superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of New York, along with David Ojeda, regional superintendent for the upper counties, and Father Edwin Bonifacio, administrator at St. Mary’s Church. 

In each classroom, Cardinal Dolan, Bishop Colacicco, and Sister Mary Grace greeted teachers and students, checking up on their activities for the day and seeing how each room was equipped and decorated.  

“It’s an amazing testimony to rebirth, for sure. We often hear about schools closing. This is a story of a school that closed, and now, not even five years later, it’s been open two and a half years, and it’s just growing and growing,” Sister Mary Grace told The Good Newsroom in an interview.  

She gave the credit for the school’s success to Bishop Colacicco. “I believe that with the right people and a dream, it can happen. I really believe that,” Sister Mary Grace said.  

“It is becoming more of a private school. We started with UPK, and we have doubled our enrollment, not only for our UPK students, but for our private students. We are doing well with enrollment for next year. So, I feel like we have the right plan and learning environment here that is making us very successful,” Patricia Luzar, the school’s principal, told The Good Newsroom in an interview. 

She thanked Cardinal Dolan for seeing St. Mary’s during one of his final pastoral visits. “I think it’s fitting because he was behind us reopening. It was wonderful that even though he’s leaving us, he has this legacy of this school reopening for him, and he got to see how much it has grown since it reopened. It was a true blessing to have him here,” Luzar said.