Bonner-Prendie staff hope Pope Leo XIV's election helps accelerate Father Bill Atkinson's path to sainthood
Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Mass since becoming the head of the Catholic Church on Friday. The new pontiff says his election is both a cross to bear and a blessing. He will be formally installed on May 18, and his first general audience will be on May 21.
Teachers and staff at Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast High School in Drexel Hill were pumped when they learned the new pope was an American. But what really took them over the edge is that he is an Augustinian.
That's when they started digging. They pulled out a 2004 yearbook and found out the pope had visited the school.
A yearbook page shows then-Father Robert Prevost surrounded by fellow Augustinian fathers. Over the last 24 hours, the wow factor has been off the charts.
"It's like going to school here, everything is so historic," Daniel Putu, a ninth grade student, said.
Daniel and fellow classmate Jude Murphy were amazed: amazed by the moment, the pope's U.S. background, his local ties and that he even mowed a cemetery lawn in Havertown.
"It's really cool to show somebody not only from America but from a little county in Pennsylvania can become the universal leader of the church," Murphy said.
Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago native, graduated from Villanova University in 1977. He was a familiar face over the years in suburban Philadelphia.
Bonner-Prendie President Dr. John Cooke says they were shocked at the revelation that the new pope had once visited the school.
"It was really awesome and surreal to know that we actually had a pope here at Bonner and Prendie," Cooke said.
"The current pope once stood in that hallway over there," Assistant Principal Anne Marie Dolceamore said. "These are pretty hallowed grounds if you think about it."
For this community and people like Dolceamore, they wonder if the elevation of an Augustinian accelerates a cause very dear to them — the cause for sainthood for fellow Augustinian Friar Father Bill Atkinson.
"Knowing that the current pope is a fellow Augustinian of Father Bill Atkinson, that maybe it'll push the process a little quicker," Dolceamore said.
Father Atkinson, in 1965, was critically injured after a toboggan crash. He was studying to be a priest. Father Atkinson would go on to teach and minister thousands of students before his death in 2006.
He was a teacher at Monsignor Bonner High School for 30 years.
"We are very hopeful things will happen sooner than expected," Cooke said.
Dolceamore, a Havertown mother of two girls, credits prayer to Father Atkinson as the reason she is cancer-free today. Her healing is under investigation by the church as a possible miracle. There are at least two other known cases attributed to Father Atkinson.
"We are so lucky to be able to say we knew him," Dolceamore said. "And I'm sad the students can't say the same. It's amazing the history of this campus and that the current pope was here."
