By Tom Maguire
Associate editor
Their reward, beyond pizza, was to query the Bishop.
Cathedral Academy at Pompei (CAP) School students had been part of the TV Mass for Christmas, and Bishop Douglas J. Lucia “was impressed by them and he wanted to come and be with them today,” Father Daniel Caruso said Jan. 31.
So the students in the kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school enjoyed apple juice, instead of the usual milk, and Di Lauro’s Bakery & Pizza sheet pizza, a treat usually reserved for one Friday a month. “Religion and food, you can’t go wrong,” Father Caruso said.
Bishop Lucia receives a welcome card from a CAP student in the cafeteria.
In the cafeteria, the Bishop sat at a table with three sixth-graders who aspire to be a doctor, a brain surgeon and a microbiologist. “They are our future and so I’m very excited by that,” Bishop Lucia said of the students.
“We asked him: How do you become a bishop? Because that seems very fun and interesting,” sixth-grader Bernice Innocent said. (The technical answer is that then–Father Lucia was called by the Holy Father’s nuncio in 2019 and was told the Holy Father wished him to come to Syracuse.)
“I came here because this is a very special school,” Bishop Lucia said, “and I love being with the kids at CAP, and I always learn, in the sense that I’m always appreciative of what they learn. Their enthusiasm for learning here at CAP makes me enthusiastic and it reminds me of the great value our Catholic schools have.”
Father Caruso, the pastor of the Church of Our Lady of Pompei / St. Peter, and also St. John the Baptist / Holy Trinity Church, said, “It’s a great honor” to host the Bishop, “and we’re helping the children understand we’re part of something larger and the Bishop represents that and they’re very appreciative. … They know that the diocese is helping to keep the school functioning and supporting them and their families to be able to come here, and they’re grateful.”
Bishop Douglas J. Lucia has lunch at a table with three sixth-graders on Jan. 31 at Cathedral Academy at Pompei in Syracuse. (Sun photos | Chuck Wainwright)
Asked for a defining feature of the school, Father Caruso said: “We consider ourself the mission school of the diocese. We reach out to a broad group of individuals from different cultures, different countries, different continents, different religious background; but when they’re here they all find a place to be welcomed and to learn about the Catholic faith.”
As for courses of study, Father Caruso cited the basics of social studies, math, science and English language arts; specials are gym, music, technology, art, “and then for us the most important is the religion, which is a separate class each day, but also something that flows through all the other classes.”
“The kids were very excited to see the Bishop, it’s always a special occasion,” said cafeteria worker Maryann Iannettone. She was a Pompei student herself in the days when the Missionary Franciscan nuns, with their brown habits, taught school and the bishop was Bishop Walter A. Foery.
The next big event at CAP is May’s Basket Bonanza with donated items that are raffled off to support the school.
“They’re all managed and run by parishioners whose kids went here years ago but they are still active,” Iannettone said.
