Saint Francis Xavier School is one of the oldest continually operated Catholic parish schools in the Western Hemisphere. The school was founded in 1845 by Reverend Patrick Rafferty, pastor of Saint Francis Xavier parish from 1842 until his death in 1863. Father Rafferty, an immigrant from Ireland, originally housed the school in the basement of the first Saint Francis Xavier Church building at 25th and Biddle Streets. That location is not far from the site of the great front steps of today’s Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Reverend Patrick Rafferty
Location of the old St. Francis Xavier Church
The SFX parish history relates that at its beginning, Saint Francis Xavier school had only one teacher, a Mr. Connelly who had previously been a schoolmaster in Ireland. In its early days, the school’s mission involved the education of adults as well as children, but by the late 1850s that situation was changing steadily: the student body had risen to nearly 100 children by 1854, and adult education was becoming an ever smaller part of the school’s mission.
Father Rafferty entered eternal life in March of 1863. In 1864, Pastor Rafferty was succeeded in that office by Reverend James Maginn, another Irish immigrant.
Reverend James Maginn
Father Maginn recognized that the steadily increasing size of the school’s student body (enrollment had risen to 150 in the early 1860s) demonstrated that the basement of the church was no longer an acceptable location to house and operate Saint Francis Xavier School. Accordingly, he had erected a three story brick school building at the Southwest corner of 24th and Green Streets. This building, referred to in parish history as the old school, opened in the late 1860s.
At about the time of the Green Street school’s opening, Father Maginn secured and began renovating a building adjacent to the school, which would serve as a convent for the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM). The IHM Sisters accepted responsibility for the administration of the school in 1869. Until that time, Saint Francis Xavier School was served by a completely lay faculty. The Sisters occupied the renovated convent in July of 1872.
In the years after the Green Street school was constructed, the size of the student-body continued to grow. In the early 1900s an addition to the school on Green Street was constructed, but as time went on it became obvious that a new, larger school was the only true solution to the issue of needed space.
The task of constructing a new Saint Francis Xavier School was undertaken by Pastor Reverend Joseph O’Keefe, a native Philadelphian. The new, and present, Saint Francis Xavier School opened in 1923 at 24th & Wallace Streets.
Pastor Reverend Joseph O’Keefe The Current St. Francis Xavier School
The Green Street school and the convent beside it were demolished to provide space for a new convent building, which was dedicated and occupied by The IHM Sisters in 1949.
The new convent building
The student body of Saint Francis Xavier School continued to grow, peaking at 1,300 students during the 1940s and 1950s. In the early 1960s, due to demographic changes, the population of parish Catholic schools throughout the city began to decline. By the early 1990s the student-body at Saint Francis Xavier’s had become constant at between 240 and 250 children.
Concurrent with the decline in enrollment was a decline in the number of women choosing to enter the IHM. Because of that decline, The IHM Sisters could not administer and staff all of the schools to which they had committed themselves for so many years. The IHM had little choice but to reconsider where to assign the members of their community. In the autumn of 2002, Sister Rose De Carlo IHM, the then Superior General, announced that The IHM Sisters would be leaving Saint Francis Xavier at the conclusion of the school year. On May 18, 2003, a special Mass of farewell was celebrated and a reception was held in the school hall. An era which had lasted 133 years had come to conclusion.
By the spring of 2003, a group of lay persons assembled to form the Saint Francis Xavier School Advisory Board. The Advisory Board, after conducting several interviews during the summer, selected Ms. Dolores Butler as the school’s new principal. Ms. Butler, who had been involved in Catholic Education for 32 years, became the first lay person to serve as SFX principal in 134 years.
The School Advisory Board now consists of persons who are roughly half members of the parish and half supportive Catholic lay people from outside the parish. The lay advisory board provides leadership for the school whose student population is very diverse and consists of students most of whom are not from the parish.
We function in the Oratorian tradition, which mirrors the humility and perseverance of St. Philip Neri, and we enjoy the heritage of classical liberal education expressed by John Henry Cardinal Newman, C.O.2 After the model of the Congregation, we employ a consensus form of governance.
In pursuit of the fullness of the truth, we rejoice in the Magisterium of the Church, we are obedient to the Archbishop of Philadelphia, we respect the leadership of our Pastor and we work with the Office of Catholic Education of the Archdiocese. St. Francis Xavier School shares in the tradition of the Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, which has the pastoral care of the parish. Our Pastor is elected by the Congregation and approved by the Archbishop. We are united in the apostolate of Catholic education.
Our school community, the Congregation of the Oratory, and most importantly, our families realize that we are heralds of the Faith. The Church is the family of God, and as part of that family, we exercise the priest-hood of the baptized in reaching out to all people of good will so that they may discover the truth of the Catholic Faith. “The eleven disciples made their way to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had summoned them. At the sight of him, those who had entertained doubts fell down in homage. Jesus came forward and addressed them in these words: ‘Full authority has been given to me both in heaven and on earth; go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teach them to carry out everything I have commanded you. And know that I am with you always, until the end of the world.'” (Mt. 28:16-20)
After the models of St. Philip Neri and the Venerable, John Henry Cardinal Newman, we share a Catholic heritage of classical liberal education. This is a statement of unity. We are a faculty and administration which is at the same time devoutly Catholic and ever seeking academic excellence. In this personal unity, we grow together in our Faith and in academic expertise by the continuous communication we all enjoy so that we encourage one another in our desire for holiness, and we share the expertise of our subject areas to become better teachers. The richness of one interest or subject area will always improve the appreciation of another by our communion in service.
Therefore, our students will learn that truth is one, greater than an individual subject area, and evidence of the Creator who is truth itself. We are a school that does not simply present a series of separate subjects. Faculty and administration who are at the same time devoted Catholics and excellent teachers present the fullness of the truth by whom they are and what they teach in communion with one another. The Catholic Faith is not just a gloss brushed over separate subjects or a part of the curriculum but rather, a principle of unity which teaches first of all, the infinite goodness of the Creator. There is one truth manifested by His Creation, in His Son and through the power of the Holy Spirit. An excellent academic program and the Catholic Faith are not separate systems but one truth.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, sections 1655, 1656 and 1657.
“An assemblage of learned men, zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust the claims and relations of their respective subjects of investigation. They learn to respect, to consult, to aid each other. Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes, though in his own case he only pursues a few sciences out of the multitude. He profits by an intellectual tradition which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is call ‘liberal’.”
— Newman, John Henry, C.O., The Idea of a University, Discourse V
“Summing up, gentlemen, what I have said, I lay it down that all knowledge forms one whole, because its subject matter is one; for the universe in its length and breadth is so intimately knit together that we cannot separate off portion from portion, and operation from operation, except by a mental abstraction; and then not satisfy me if religion is here, and science there, and young men converse with science all day, and again, as to its Creator, though He of course in His own Being is infinitely separate from it, and theology has its departments towards which human knowledge has no relations, yet He has so implicated Himself with it and taken it into His very bosom by His presence in it, His providence over it, His Impressions upon it, and His influences through it that we cannot truly or fully contemplate it without in some aspects contemplating Him.”
— Newman, John Henry, C.O., The Idea of a University, Discourse III.
“Here, then, I conceive, is the object of the Holy See and the Catholic Church in setting up universities; it is to reunite things which were in the beginning joined together by God, and have been put asunder by man. Some persons will say that I am thinking of confining, distorting, and stunting the growth of the intellect by ecclesiastical supervision. I have no such thought. Nor have I any thought of a compromise, as if religion must give up something, and science something. I wish the intellect to range with the utmost freedom, and religion to enjoy an equal freedom; but what I am stipulating for is that they should be found in one and the same place, and exemplified in the same persons. I want to destroy that diversity of centers which puts everything into confusion by creating a contrariety of influences. I wish the same spots and the same individuals to be at once oracles of philosophy and shrines of devotion. It will not satisfy me, what satisfies so many, to have two independent systems, intellectual and religious, going at once side by side, by a sort of division of labor, and only accidentally brought together. It will lodge with religion in the evening. It is not touching the evil to which these remarks have been directed if young men eat and drink and sleep in one place, and think in another: I want the same roof to contain both the intellectual and moral discipline. Devotion is not a sort of finish given to the sciences; nor is science a sort of feather in the cap, if I may so express myself, an ornament and set-off to devotion. I want the intellectual layman to be religious, and the devout ecclesiastic to be intellectual.”
— Newman, John Henry, C.O., Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, “Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training”
Catechism, op cit.
Classical Education – The Movement Sweeping America, Gene E. Veith, Jr. and Andrew Kern, Capital Research Center, 2001, p. 13.
The Educated Child – A Parents Guide from Preschool through Eight Grade, William J. Bennett, Chester E. Finn, Jr., John T. E. Cribb, Jr., Simon & Schuster, 1999, p. 94.
Ibid, p. 188-189.
Ibid, p. 195.