Since the news broke about the possible closure of Pope John XXIII, alumni, teachers, administrators and parents have raised almost $40,000 in an online fundraising effort.
This is a remarkable sum of money to raise in a week but far short of the $500,000 that must be raised to satisfy the Archdiocese.
School officials have remained mum about the door remaining open for another year, or for a future marked by better organization and vision.
Some of the school’s leaders have made comments that seem dreary as if the end is near – so close it will be accomplished at the end of June. The diehards have sworn to keep fighting against the Archdiocese which is acting like a rich relative no longer interested in supporting its poor relatives of color and ethnicity in Everett.
It is a hard thing, an almost impossible thing to move the Archdiocese away from a decision already made.
Even though the Archdiocese has said it is leaving the door open, only slightly ajar, for the folks trying to save the school, the belief is that when push comes to shove, the Archdiocese just doesn’t care as much about its Catholic schools of learning as it does for rehabilitating its giant cathedrals which remain locked and empty much of the time. The heroic thing to do is to give Pope John XXIII the right to exist. Don’t abort Pope John.
It would not be fair or just.
Give the school what it needs to survive.
The Catholic Church can afford this.
It is a pittance of money to save one of the Archdiocese’s great learning laboratories where people of all colors and religions and religious persuasions go to school in Everett in a grand experiment.
Mainly, the place is Catholic.
If you can’t save a Catholic learning institution like Pope John XXIII, then what can be saved?
If there is no will in the Archdiocese of Boston to save a Catholic learning institution that was stolen from and is on its knees because of that, then what exactly would it take, we wonder?
Where is the Cardinal when he is needed to act as the shepherd of the flock?
Where is he?