Nine hundred days after Our Mother of Consolation Catholic School burned to the ground, it has risen from the ashes.
Auxiliary Bishop Christopher Cooke joined parish and civic leaders, donors, parents, and students on Saturday, Sept. 6 for a Mass, celebration and official reopening of the rebuilt school building in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill section.
“I’m in awe of everything — all the emotions, and just to see the excitement in the kids’ faces, the parents’ faces. It’s amazing,” said Jessica Stack, the school’s principal.
“It’s kind of mythical like the Phoenix,” said Richard Cardona, an OMC parent and volunteer who helped plan the new building.
“From out of those ashes comes this new, beautiful building for these children to be able to enjoy and for all the families to be able to share.”
For the $17.5 million renovation, it took $3.3 million of donations in a capital campaign, the skill and will of a team of planners to create a new school building, and an entire community who rallied around the students to continue their education after the previous school building burned down in March 2023.
“Could any one of us have done the whole range of these things? No, actually not, if we’re honest, right?” Bishop Cooke said during the homily. “But it was the Holy Spirit working in and through you as a community.”
That community came through, from firefighters who rescued everyone from the school without injury, to
Chestnut Hill College which hosted classes while the school was rebuilt.
“I think it takes a village to do anything, and our village really stepped up,” said Stack, the principal.
“To see the community come together, they didn’t skip a beat. As soon as we needed anything, the neighborhood was there, the families were there, all the different foundations, everybody stepped up and was there to get us through this.”
Auxiliary Bishop Christopher Cooke blesses the newly renovated Our Mother of Consolation Catholic School in Chestnut Hill. (Photo: Jay Sorgi)
Bishop Cooke explained how the reading from Isaiah describes God delivering a new creation “to be a joy, and its people a delight.”
“Hope was quite challenged, wasn’t it? It did not look good, it did not look easy, and yet God remained with you as a community, as He remains with us right now,” said the bishop.
Following the Mass, guests had a chance to tour the new school. It has everything from a brand new cafeteria — something the students previously never had — to an innovation lab with robots and computer coding.
“I can say that they have a state-of-the-art system,” said Cardona, who works as a senior information technology director at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I would be proud to install it in my own school at the University of Pennsylvania, and the IT here is probably better than any other elementary school in the city.” As tragic as the fire of two years ago was, it represented a“silver bullet” of opportunity to upgrade the school buiding to continue Catholic education there for many years, according to Brian Abernathy, a key member of the parish planning team for the new school.
“We’d never have a school like this if it wasn’t for the fire, unfortunately,” he said. “We were looking at putting together small (classrooms), replacing floors and doors, and now we have everything brand new, state-of-the-art.”
Oblate Father John Fisher, Our Mother of Consolation Parish’s pastor, credits Abernathy and his team for leading the effort in an area in which most priests don’t have expertise — construction projects.
“This is the one Spirit, many gifts. This is it. We had a rebuilding committee that was second to none,” said Father Fisher. “There were no egos, and everyone just worked so darn hard for the kids and for the greater glory of God.”
Visitors tour a newly rebuilt classroom at Our Mother of Consolation Catholic School in Chestnut Hill. (Photo: Jay Sorgi)
The students themselves spoke of not only their awe and joy for the new school, but their relief for coming back to their own school again.
“I just like to be back. It’s fun finally to be back,” said James, who is 11 years old.
His classmate, Luke, said attending other schools during the reconstruction “was really tough because we had to wait a long time, not see our friends. It just took forever for us to get the new school. And the new school is just great.”
“It’s very nostalgic,” said Sully, who is 9. “We all are very happy to be back at OMC and we’re very prepared to have a great year.”
For Stack, the night culminated a journey of emotions for the students, families, teachers and herself that has turned from grief to jubilation.
“I got here the first day of school emotionally, in tears, and then I saw those kids come in and the joy on their faces and the joy on my staff’s faces and the parents,” said Stack. “I look and sound like a happy mama bear.”
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