By Jay Sorgi • Posted September 24, 2025

Catholic schools are designed not just to educate the mind, but care for all that God made of a young person — the psyche, heart, and spirit as well.

Archbishop John Carroll High School in Radnor, Delaware County is taking that mission to the very heart and center of the educational experience with the new Connelly Wellness Center, springboarded by a $450,000 grant from the Connelly Foundation based in Conshohocken.

The Archbishop Carroll community celebrated the grand opening of the center on Monday, Sept. 22 with donors, civic leaders, faculty and staff present for a ribbon-cutting, prayer and reception.

“We want to provide wraparound services, almost like a hug around our kids so that all of their help and support services are in the same space,” said Carroll President Dr. Patricia Scott.

“Blessed Basil Moreau, who was a Holy Cross priest, always said that the mind could not be cultivated at the expense of the heart, so it’s just a beautiful way of thinking about children. We have to provide more than just academics. We have to get into their heart and their soul and who they want to be as human beings, because that’s the most important part.”

Scott observed how that need to care for the whole person became intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it triggered a rise in anxiety and depression.

Four years ago Scott and an official with the Connelly Foundation began to discuss their observations of students’ whole health during the stresses of the pandemic.

“We had a great conversation about students and what we were seeing,” Scott said. “I left that meeting thinking, ‘We have to do something about this. I can’t just talk about this. We have to do something about it.”

Four years of fundraising and designs turned into a comprehensive student wellness hub that has become the center of the school – not only figuratively, but literally as well.

“We were fortunate to have a space like this, 6,600 square feet, that was somewhat unused in the middle of the building, so we could truly create a central location and have it centrally located for all of our kids,” said Carroll Principal Bill Gennaro.

“To have a space that every kid’s going to have to walk by four, five, six times a day, and to know that they can go in to get any of the supports they need that they can’t get in their regular classroom, I think is going to be a real game-changer for them.”

The wellness center attaches to the outdoor courtyard in the school’s center. It creates a multi-modal gathering space for young people to congregate, get assistance with academics or help making a college decision, plus find a mental, emotional or spiritual break they need before returning to class and life.

The center empowers Archbishop Carroll to make students’ mental health a prime concern.

“We have the whole of the guidance staff down here,” said Marguerite DiMattia, Carroll’s director of guidance and chair of the Guidance Department. “It will include mental health and college advising. There’s also our PATS program, which is our academic support program, and our school minister is here. We’re able to bring our sensory room into here, too. So if the student needs to reset on their own and they take 10, 15 minutes, they can go back to class.

“Carroll has really made mental health a top priority for the students for the past four years. We’ve done mental health and wellness days in February where we halt classes and focus just on mental health. So this school truly is making a statement about mental wellness for our young people.”

The centralized plan of the wellness center means the campus ministry center is located right across from the school’s chapel.

“If we were not incorporating our faith, which our school is rooted in and based in, then we would be doing our students a disservice,” said Gennaro.

“To have that in there, directly across from the chapel, directly across from the courtyard, solves something that I think was missing and was lacking, and can really help to build the faith of our students, along with their academic strength and their mental health and wellness support.”

It’s in the spiritual mission of the school that Father William Donovan, Pastor of Saint John Vianney Parish in Gladwyne, Montgomery County and a 1977 Carroll graduate, shared the prayer for the center’s opening.

“May our new Connelly Wellness Center be an important instrument in developing the great potential implanted by God into each one of our students,” he said.

“May it be a graced place where our young people will grow beautifully by the comprehensive services offered here, thereby strengthening their minds and hearts, their bodies and spirits. As the great St. Irenaeus said, ‘The glory of God is man fully alive.’”