Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley and Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday led a group of dignitaries and dozens of schoolchildren in a groundbreaking ceremony for a reconfigured Catholic school system in Dorchester and Mattapan. The archdiocese is planning this fall to replace seven existing parish schools in those two neighborhoods with one regionalized school system, called the Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy, that will operate in five locations.
The elementary schools now operating at St. Peter parish in Meetinghouse Hill, as well as those at the former parishes of St. Kevin, in Uphams Corner, and St. William, in Savin Hill, will close.
The five remaining school campuses will be located at the parishes of Blessed Mother Teresa on Columbia Road, St. Ann in Neponset, St. Gregory in Lower Mills, St. Mark south of Fields Corner, and St. Angela in Mattapan Square.
The Dorchester reconfiguration is the most ambitious component to date of the archdiocese's 2010 initiative, which is an effort to shore up the struggling Catholic schools of the region.
The archdiocese has previously regionalized the parish schools of Brockton, and has also agreed to assist a parish school in Gloucester, and claims that enrollments in Brockton and Gloucester are rising as a result.
Saving the Catholic schools has become a major priority for O'Malley.
There are now just 99 Catholic elementary schools in the archdiocese, down from 250 in 1965, and the archdiocese continues to close several failing parish schools each year.
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