Today, there is no less need for articulate Catholic students than when the first Catholic school in Connecticut convened in the musty basement of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Hartford.  Thus, the proverbial mustard seed of our Catholic school education here was sown November 2, 1830.  Clearly, the "idea" of Catholic learning from its origination supplanted any fussing over its immediate physical environs.  Contemporaries to the miasmic swamps outside Rome likened the basement church’s awful dampness!
 
"We are not so ignorant as you imagine us to be!" declared the equally fledgling first Catholic newspaper of the day.  The editor was responding in a milieu that lampooned Catholics as dangerously uninformed "Papists" blindly loyal and easily gulled. 
 
The earliest Catholic pastors of Trinity first enlisted a little band of lay women and men as founding teachers who would extirpate such libels by transplanting the Church's ancient mission "TO TEACH AS JESUS DID" to Connecticut.  If the trailblazers cited above could behold Catholic education 176 years later in 2006, they perhaps would not be astonished.  Their famed Jesuit Bishop Fenwick had virtually predicted the outcome!  He noted in his journal, "...the spirit of inquiry increases... Splendid prospect for religion in Hartford!"
 
Within the Archdiocese of Hartford, the varied network of Catholic schools thrives despite relentless modern pressures.  Among the 176 dioceses in the U.S.A., Hartford ranks as the 26th largest educational network – 68 Catholic schools with a total student enrollment of nearly 18,000.  These students are dispersed over 59 elementary/middle schools; 4 Archdiocesan Catholic high schools; 5 private Catholic high schools; and 53 pre-Kindergarten programs. 
 
Catholicity as an AUTHENTIC mark of the Archdiocesan school network is among other ways represented in the vital statistic that 82% of the total enrollment is Roman Catholic.  Not the mere statistic, but the daily cultivated "living faith-in-action" which this aggregate number aspires toward is our most treasured hope!  A particular source of pride is taken in that Archdiocesan schools also boast a minority pupil population of 34% while 20% of overall enrollments are youngsters of other faiths.  Inclusively and multiculturalism are welcome enhancements permanently in place.  As was earlier noted, a few Catholic lay people made up the staff of our first school in 1830.  Presently, there are 1,479 lay faculty, 90% of whom are Catholic.  On May 11, 1852 eight Sisters of Mercy came to staff St. Patrick School.  (The parish had changed its name to reflect the Catholic immigrant demographics.)  Before long, these 19th-century pioneering women religious were teaching over 200 students in the basement of the recently completed new parish church. 
 
Over the often frenetic decades and throughout most of the 20th century, mostly women religious from a number of dedicated orders would make possible the proliferation of our school network.  The golden years of Archdiocesan education were 1961-1974.  Excluding secondary schools, there were 106 elementary schools!  The overwhelming majority of faculty were women religious.  Massive socio-cultural change has since occurred, a factor perhaps accounting for today's tally of religious/clergy at 58 who continue in the ministry of Catholic education.  There is, however, a continuity of teaching-staff gender in that of our total current lay faculty (1,662) the tally of lay female faculty (including part-time) amounts to l,197 (includes elementary/middle/secondary institutions.)
 
Archdiocesan schools will forever remain in the debt of those Sisters who taught: Sisters of Mercy; Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery; Religious Teachers Filippini; Felician Sisters; Franciscan Sisters; Dominican Sisters; Daughters of the Holy Spirit; Contemplative Sisters of the Good Shepherd; Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur; Ursiline Sisters of the Congregation of Tidonk, Belgium; School Sisters of Notre Dame; Benedictines of Jesus Crucified; Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary; Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; Congregation de Notre Dame; Sisters of the Cross and Passion; Consecrated Seculars of the Daughters of the Holy Spirit; Dominican Oblates of Jesus; Daughters of Wisdom; Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist; Little Sisters of the Poor; Mary Knoll Sisters of St. Dominic; Medical Mission Sisters; Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity; Daughters of Our Lady of the Garden; Order of St. Benedict of the Strict Observance; Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth; Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of the Church; Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy; Society of the Holy Child Jesus; Sisters of Jesus Crucified; Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Regura; and Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis.
 
In turn, the marvelous ministries of the above honor roll prospered because there was much vision in building the academic and catechetical edifice in which such excellence flourished.  Besides the 19th century priest progenitors – Bernard O'Cavanaugh the originator; James Fitton the sustainer; and John Brady the expander who gave out book prizes to reward learning by perpetuating literacy – there were 20th century clerics who ADVANCED the cause of a more broadly enduring Catholic education, Twelve Superintendents, initially titled "Supervisors." If these administrators saw farther and built bigger, they were standing on the shoulders of the giants who had fashioned the bricks!

Progress was cumulative, each superintendent widening the parameters of tireless predecessors.  (Psalms – "...He hath placed my feet on rock and established my steps...") 1906 – Reverend Patrick J. McCormick begins to unify the school network by organizing the premier Teachers' Institute at St. John Convent, Middletown; 1910 – Reverend William J. Fitzgerald crafts first official syllabus and demarcates with precision the school-day class times; 1920 – Reverend Edwin A. Flynn advocates Parent-Teacher Associations and establishes kindergartens; 1928 - The Most Reverend Maurice F. McAuliffe was Auxiliary Bishop of Hartford, he also served for one year as Acting Supervisor of Schools and as President of St. Thomas Seminary; 1929 – Reverend Austin  F. Munich initiates uniform testing and regular examinations; 1945 -'51 – Reverend Monsignor Arthur J. Heffernan, Ph.D. appoints a group of roving diocesan supervisors in addition to founding the Diocesan Teachers College – servicing the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery, the Sisters of Mercy and Daughters of the Holy Ghost; proceeded to re-inaugurate the Teacher's Institute, held September 1948 at St. Joseph Cathedral. The choice of the Cathedral gave added accent to these Institutes as valid prisms for reviewing the overall educational mission and, under discernment from the Holy Spirit, mapping out any crucial imperatives; 1951-'61 – Reverend Monsignor Robert W. Doyle accelerates school organization by massive curriculum revision, proposed and planned construction of three regional high schools, and narrowly wins approval from the state legislature for a Transportation Bill providing buses for non-public school pupils; the latter truly signified the rising credibility of Catholic schools in the public eye, a hard-won recognition back then which can never be taken for granted even now. The tenure of Reverend Monsignor James A. Connelly 1961-'74, an era earlier cited, was remarkable for its benchmarks of parish growth and subsequent school openings to accommodate a swelling Catholic student population.  Subsequently, Monsignor Connelly presided over the recruitment of the largest number of lay teachers in the history of the Archdiocese, 17 in the year 1967 alone at East Catholic High.  Official policy was also amended to allow women religious to be school principals.  Not only in response to necessity, the move was a long overdue recognition of the Sisters who were already 'de facto' directing many parish schools!  More progress surged with the unprecedented opening of four new Archdiocesan high schools, the realization of Monsignor Doyle's vision on Monsignor Connelly's fruitful watch.  In fact, there were so many lay faculty during this epic period that Archbishop Henry J. O'Brien, in accord with the famed papal encyclical 'Rerum Novarum' under Pope Leo XIII, fully acknowledged the rights of lay staff to organize the Greater Hartford Catholic Educational Association.  Founding President, the late Daniel Dwyer, issued a joyous call for the lay and religious faculty to lock arms and lock in the superior standards of Archdiocesan Academe.
 
Before and while the new high school construction moved forward, a massive fund drive was launched with lay volunteers going door to door seeking individual and family pledges from the parishioners.  So many potential Catholic pupils had heretofore amassed that some dedicated pastors already had their own high schools while others asked episcopal permission to build their own as well.  But the larger plan resulted in the birth of South Catholic High (Hartford), Northwest Catholic (West Hartford), East Catholic High (Manchester) and later St. Paul Catholic High (Bristol).
 
The dioceses of Massachusetts and New York already had strong regional Catholic secondary education.  Now, the Hartford Archdiocese added to this splendid American mosaic of Catholic learning.  Yet, despite an already venerable Catholic educational tradition, skepticism still existed about how competitive these new schools would be, especially in the enlivened area of science coming in the 1957 wake of the Soviet Union's "Sputnik" outer space satellite.  Incredible as it is to recount, in some educational circles of that time, there was a ludicrous misperception that Catholics were not allowed to believe much in science despite the fact that a Renaissance Pope had sponsored the ground-breaking mathematical work of the famous Copernicus!
 
Keenly aware that there was much to prove on many vital fronts, Archbishop Henry J. O'Brien selected four incomparable priest-educators to head each new high school:  Reverend John T. Shugrue, South; Reverend Bradford Colton, Northwest; Reverend Charles E. Shaw, East; Reverend Edmund O'Brien, St. Paul.  Truly, these men were canny masters of the educational landscape who in a very short time garnered the complete confidence of educators, parochial and public!  It was not unusual for these men to be consulted by public school administrators!  During the capital fund drive for the new high schools, a parochial school student Ann O'Cornell at Our Lady of Sorrows School, Hartford had won an Archdiocesan contest for best slogan to promote support for the new stars of Catholic secondary education – "FORFEIT A DOLLAR, PRODUCE A CATHOLIC SCHOLAR!" Thousands of students later despite many stormy times, this prophecy became a history living still!
 
When the boom Catholic school years ended circa 1974, exacerbated by the first nationwide fuel crisis, the new economic and cultural order demanded innovative thinking.  The spiraling cost of living cut into the ability to maintain enrollment levels at tuition-based Catholic schools.  The drop in available women religious intensified the Catholic school crisis.  Reverend James G. Fanelli (Superintendent-1974-'89) established the nation's first formal Archdiocesan Development Program for Catholic elementary and secondary schools.  Following his lengthy years of service confronting ever escalating financial pressures, Father Fanelli came to represent with special valor the need for total immersion of the Superintendent's office in the issues of the day. 
 
In 1989, Brother John M. McGovern, C.S.C., a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross and the first consecrated relgious brother to serve as superintendent, accelerated the use of computers in Archdiocesan schools.  He also convened the Connecticut Federation of Catholic School Parents, a sentinel organization to inform Catholic parents about important trends in legislation affecting Catholic schools.  The year 1991 sent a shock wave through the morale of the entire Archdiocesan community of schools when a complex of circumstances led to the closing of Hartford's South Catholic High. 
 
The indomitable Reverend Zigford J. Kriss succeeded Brother John McGovern in 1992 and with episcopal consent broadened the financial base of the school network to include all parishes helping financially, even those without schools.  He expanded computer-aided instruction across the curriculum.  Sacred Heart University of Bridgeport was also enlisted to offer graduate studies to Archdiocesan faculty.  Most significantly, the Foundation for the Advancement of Catholic Schools commenced its multi-million dollar programs of financial aid and scholarships to modernize the science facilities of the four remaining regional high schools.  In 1993, when St. Thomas Aquinas High in New Britain converted to a private secondary school to avoid being closed, the sad event again augured the severity of irrepressible financial pressures on Catholic schools.  Aquinas closed in 1999, having been since the '50's a pioneer secondary school, which had served as one working model for the new regional Archdiocesan high schools of the '60's. 

Mr. Dale R. Hoyt is the twelfth superintendent and the first lay person to serve in this position. Dale enthusiastically began his tenure in August 2004 with a new vision that captures  "Catholic Schools: Education for a Lifetime" as the branding for the Archdiocese of Hartford. Within months into his tenure, he initiated rigorous academic standards of excellence, technology into the curriculum design, committee-driven school boards, marketing campaigns, and faith formation that enhances the network of Catholic schools unique image and service within the Church and community. The network of Catholic schools continues to work together in support of Superintendent Hoyt’s vision for building upon the achievements of the past while moving proactively into the future.

On March 28, 2007, over 350 delegates gathered for the historical Educational Symposium to learn, to share, to be inspired and challenged, and to plan for a strong future.  A panel of four extraordinary speakers shared their national perspective on the four-core values central to Catholic school education in the Archdiocese of Hartford: Catholic Identity, Quality Catholic Education, Accessibility, and School Advancement.  From this Symposium, Common Threads was published in January 2008, which included Archbishop Henry J. Mansell's pastoral letter, Together, We Produce Great People; Superintendent Dale R. Hoyt's letter, Positioning Catholic Schools for the 21st Century; and the strategic directions for the Office of Catholic Schools and Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Hartford.

The current profile of Archdiocesan schools is indeed proud and potent.  Student recruitment across the spectrum remains vigorous.  Development initiatives seem to have found "true north" on the Catholic school compass of priorities.  Yes, in our new millennium elementary school closings are stubborn realities.  Yet, these time- hallowed enclaves of the Faith do not go unnoticed for their gallant histories and lasting examples for the good.  The same holds true for the demise of many historic parishes because of shifting demographics and unrelieved vocational shortages. 
 
Under the stalwart leadership of Archbishop Henry J. Mansell and Superintendent Dale R. Hoyt, we therefore greet the arriving future with a rousing salute of fidelity to our past; with a rejuvenated confidence in what the faithful present is forging by much sacrifice; and most vitally with a heartfelt commending of our entire educational endeavor AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM.  In so proceeding, we as the Archdiocesan educational community pridefully recall another mystic ancestral prophecy fulfilled in the 1823 benediction given at Hartford in the State House by Bishop John Cheverus –  "Do not be afraid to profess your faith openly for in so doing, you will have the respect of all...."