Saint Pascal Baylon School, Hollis

Saint Pascal Baylon School, Hollis

When St. Pascal's opened on September 5, 1938 the 1A was so crowded that Father Kinsella, now Monsignor Kinsella, telephoned to Reverend Mother Jane Frances for another Sister. As a result there were two classes of 1A opened and ten Sisters on the staff in addition to Sister Rufina who came as Superior. Since the Blessed Sacrament was not brought to the convent chapel until the laborers had finished their work around the convent the first Mass had to be postponed until All Saints Day. The school was dedicated a few weeks later on November 27 by our present Most Reverend Archbishop - then Bishop Molloy.

A new grade was added each term to the school and when in June 1942 the first graduation was held 69 pupils received diplomas.

Sister Rufina spent six years at St. Pascal's and was followed by Sister M. Adelais who also completed a term of six years. Sister Elred, her successor, came in 1950 and had finished a little less than two years of her assignment when God called her to Himself. Sister Vincent Marie, our present Superior, was then appointed.

Last May (1955) the parish celebrated its Silver Jubilee and to mark the event ground was broken for a parish high school. This when completed will be of untold value both in lessening the diocesan high school load and in making a complete education possible for our own children within the parish.

There are over eight thousand families, active Catholics, in St. Pascal's all interested in their church, their school, their convent. These faithful parishioners talk with pride of the days when Mass was celebrated in tent in 1930, of the beautiful rural English-Gothic church erected in 1931, of a school with sixteen classrooms built in 1938 and in the same year, a convent with eighteen rooms for the Sisters, a commodious community-room, refectory, kitchen and beautiful chapel, and lately, of a new Wurlitzer organ for it donated by the people in 1954.

All this material growth finds a counterpart in the spiritual development of the youth of St. Pascal's. Many vocations flow from the disinterested, zealous efforts the pastor, his good curates and the Sisters. Many boys and girls have entered religious life as priests, brothers, and sisters in various communities. All the boys in the school as well as those in the Confraternity classes have enrolled themselves in the St. Dominic Savlo Club organized for the protection, through prayer and sacrifice of the teen-age boy.

The Mission work done by the children through the guiding influence of the nuns is most remarkable. The amounts sent to the Propagation of the Faith-Holy Childhood and the number of adoptions of pagan babies has illcited from Right Reverend John Boardman, Auxiliary Bishop, letters of congratulations to both Sisters and children. The cancelled stamps brought by the children have been in the million mark and the Communities that receive them have been greatly impressed by the zeal of the pupils.

No request made for help is ever ignored by the children nor their parents. The March of Dimes each year has always been far in excess of what the organizaon requested. The canned goods drive for the Little Sisters of the Poor, with a total of 2,800 cans, and many other such works of charity, should have the effect in future years of making a very unselfish group of men and women.

Back to Background list