By Jay Sorgi • Posted November 6, 2026

The imprint of Northeast Catholic High School remains carved in stone on the entrance of the building that opened 100 years ago, in 1926, and educated tens of thousands of students during the school’s 84 years.

It lives on in the hearts and minds of the alumni who continue to carry its legacy while living out their Catholic faith.

That imprint also appears on the neckties of alumni like Jim Kelly ’70 and Steve Cardullo ’72, along with the tattoos of Mike Ferris ’82, the president of the Northeast Catholic Alumni Association. The group organized a Mass and an afternoon of celebration on Nov. 1, All Saints Day, marking the 100th anniversary of the school’s founding.

“This is a special place for me,” Ferris said, proudly displaying the bright red of ‘North Catholic’ on his own tie. “Every time I’m here I get a little emotional. I graduated here. My son graduated here before they closed (in 2010). He was in the Class of 2007.”

Siblings, neighborhood kids-turned-adults and families took up much of the auditorium of the school which is now Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School.

Father Jack Kolodziej, a priest of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales which served the school and himself a 1987 graduate, celebrated Mass with close to a dozen concelebrants including several alumni of the school that served nearby Frankford and much of the “Great Northeast.”

“Welcome back to (the) place where for over 80 years, we’ve gathered for prayer, for Mass, for study hall, and for JUG (Judgment Under Guidance),” he said to a cacophony of laughter as he opened the Mass. “We gather here today to celebrate, to remember, and to enjoy the company of one another and all the saints who watch over us.”

Father Kolodziej saw this day as an ultimate homecoming, standing in a theater inside a school that occasionally had two flights of students taking classes each day due to the demand for Catholic education at the time.

In that same auditorium, the school community had “Masses like we’re doing today, prayer services, lectures, study hall,” he said after walking under the stone carving on Torresdale Avenue etched with the school’s name.

“It was an opportunity when I walked in to say, wow, so many memories and so many great, great lives that passed through here and again continue to be remembered and celebrated.”

Those lives included the Oblates, which he joined soon after his college graduation. The alumni celebrated the priests and many of the classmates and teachers whose influence still resonates today.

“(They) told us we could do whatever we wanted to do, (but) to be better, to be our best self,” said Father Kolodziej. “St. Francis (de Sales) says, ‘Be who you are, and be that well.’ That was really implanted with me here in this building.”

Oblate Father William Gore ‘59 preached the homily to alumni whose Northeast Catholic experience literally went beyond the walls of the concrete building.

“When I came here, there wasn’t enough room for our freshman class to come here. There were over 4,000 (students). There wasn’t room for us,” Father Gore said, explaining that freshmen often had to take classes at satellite locations within Northeast Philadelphia schools and parish buildings.

“Perhaps the greatest tribute of this building for all of us is that long after the last class left here, this building still brings us all together because of what happened here. Today, we aren’t just remembering the school. We’re remembering the piece of our lives, the people who were here when we walked through those doors.”

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People like Cardullo and Kelly help lead the alumni association which fosters the remaining bonds to that piece of their lives which brings so much pride in faith, neighborhood and life-molding experience.

“When we went here, we were instilled with the Falcon spirit,” Kelly said. “It’s lived on and on with everyone who ever went here, so I’m really not surprised that we’re here 100 years later to celebrate Mass today.”

He, Cardullo and other alumni traded countless stories of Philadelphia Catholic League championships won, and rivalry football games with Frankford High School on Thanksgiving Day, sometimes played at Veterans Stadium.

Now those stories come in instant moments of recognition whenever they see someone wearing “North Catholic” gear, sometimes encountering alumni on other continents.

“Today somebody walks down the block and has a North Catholic shirt on or a hat, and I do too,” Cardullo explains. “What’s the first thing they say? ‘What year?’”

Oblate Father James Dalton was Northeast Catholic’s principal from 1982 to 1992. He shared how their alumni association is continuing to infuse support for Catholic education through a scholarship program for the descendants of Northeast alumni.

“Fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who want their children to have the advantage of Catholic education can apply for scholarships through the alumni association,” he said.

“Way before there was tuition, there were schools like this. People keep remembering what they received for nothing, so now they give back.”

The scholarships that open doors for students to experience Catholic education remain a legacy of the neighborhood Catholic high school  that so many young men called home. The scholarships are today the gateway to living the greater Salesian mission of young people being themselves, and being that well.

These alumni take literally another mission they were given by St. Francis de Sales: “I have taken hold and will not let go.” That’s how they feel about the school that educated young men for eight and a half decades, with a spirit that remains today.

“This place made me a better man,” Ferris said, “than I would have been going anywhere else.”