SPRINGFIELD — Paul Gagliarducci recalls how the name of Pope Francis Preparatory School was created from the student population, not as a bureaucratic decision.
“We took two students from each grade level at each high school, 16 in all,” Gagliarducci says, remembering the merger of Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic high schools into Pope Francis, which rose from the destruction of the tornado that destroyed Cathedral in 2011.
According to Gagliarducci, a Holyoke Catholic student proposed “Cathedral Catholic.” It was a Cathedral senior, he adds, who discouraged it.
“He said if the school is called Cathedral Catholic, the ‘Catholic’ will be dropped whenever people talk about it. It would always be (just) Cathedral, and that’s not what we want,” remembers Gagliarducci, who served as executive director of the Pope Francis project prior to the school’s 2018 opening.
The delicate task of merging two high schools — each with its own distinct and proud traditions — was not easy. Neither was the task of choosing among potential locations in Chicopee, West Springfield and the site that the Most Rev. Mitchell T. Rozanski, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, eventually selected — Surrey Road in Springfield, where Cathedral had stood before the devastation of June 1, 2011.
Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno campaigned for the Surrey Road site.
“It was not just important for education, but the school was a huge anchor for the East Forest Park…
