Letter from the Pastor
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August 30, 2020
This past Tuesday was the feast of St. Joseph Calasanz. I didn’t know much about his life. He shares the feast day with King Louis IX of France; consequently, he gets second billing to the King. However, we owe a great deal to St. Joseph.
Usually when we think of public schools, we think of free education without tuition, funded through the taxes of the citizens. Of course now we know that education is a basic right for all people, which must be provided by the state. It wasn’t always like that. Education was only for the very wealthy. Vast populations couldn’t read or write.
I would imagine most people think that a government started public schooling. They would be wrong. Public education is credited to a saint: Joseph Calasanz.
St. Joseph Calasanz opened the first free school in Europe, and his ministry was directed especially to the poor kids. He was inspired by a priest in Rome who was teaching the poor children not only religion, but also teaching the children how to read, to write and basic arithmetic.
St. Joseph Calasanz was inspired by God to provide this for the hundreds of poor children around Rome. Eventually he founded, the Piarists, a religious congregation numbering around 1,375 worldwide today.
The curriculum of the first public school was both “piety and letters,” the children were learning “secular” subjects like math and science along with religion.
St. Joseph’s free school for the poor immediately grew to over a thousand students. He and his co-workers moved quickly to establish similar schools in other areas of Italy. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV approved the Order of Poor Clerks Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools. The Piarists were the first order of priests dedicated to elementary school education. The Dominicans, Benedictines and Franciscans, along with the Jesuits, ran the universities.
Another interesting aspect of St. Joseph’s life was his close friendship with Galileo. That friendship would bring a heavy cross to St. Joseph Calasanz. His critics accused the saint of all sorts of scandals, watering down the faith and allowing religion to be taught with secular subjects.
His order would be disbanded in 1646. Two years later, St. Joseph Calasanz died on August 25th. It took nine years after his death, for the Piarists to be reestablished. He was canonized in 1767 and is honored as the patron of Christian schools.
As there are many patron Saints of Catholic schools, there is indeed a patron saint of Public schools as well.
Like our Catholic School system, our Public schools are preparing for the opening of the year, so we invoke St. Joseph Calasanz, for our superintendent, staff, teachers and students as they prepare for another academic year.