As students return for the 2024-25 academic year, there is a lot of newness – new school supplies, new teachers, new classes. Even more notable this year for some students, perhaps, is a new school name.

In August, students did not return to Columbus St. Matthias School but rather St. Josephine Bakhita School, the new name for the school located at 1566 Ferris Road in the city’s north end.

The name change was the result of a parish merger that occurred in June. The former Columbus St. Anthony and St. Matthias churches merged with Columbus St. Elizabeth Church to form St. Josephine Bakhita Parish.

The former St. Matthias Church, connected to St. Josephine Bakhita School, is now known as the St. Matthias Chapel. Some ethnic Masses are held in the chapel on Sundays.

“The official name is St. Josephine Bakhita School at St. Matthias Chapel,” principal Carey Wrigley said. “The parish is St. Josephine Bakhita Parish at St. Elizabeth Church, so it’s a mouthful, but it’s a mouthful for all the right reasons.

“This is an opportunity. I really see this as an opportunity for growth, for the community, for our students.”

St. Josephine Bakhita is an African saint, born in Sudan in 1869. She was kidnapped, enslaved in Sudan and later purchased by an Italian diplomat. In Italy, she was baptized into the Church and entered the Canossian order in 1893.

St. Josephine was known for her smile, gentleness and holiness. She was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in October 2001.

At St. Josephine Bakhita School, students and staff are embracing their new patroness.

Unlike St. Matthias, who is briefly mentioned in the Bible as the Apostle who was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot, St. Josephine is a modern saint. St. Josephine is also more relatable to the school’s students and easier for them to understand.

“It’s a person who looks more like the majority of our students and the majority of our community,” Wrigley said. “I think that’s kind of the driving force behind that.”

This year, more than 270 students are enrolled at St. Josephine Bakhita. The school has students born in 15 different countries. Many students are immigrants or children of immigrants.

The community at St. Josephine Bakhita School has notably transformed throughout the years to become more diverse today than a few decades ago.

“When I was a student here at St. Matthias in the late ‘80s, it was almost all white,” Wrigley said. “Now, we are almost completely all non-white. We have a very diverse student population, a very diverse parish population. The pastor really wanted to lean into the diversity, so that name was chosen.”

Father Tony Davis, the pastor at St. Josephine Bakhita Parish, began discussing the new name with students last school year. The parish name was announced earlier this year on St. Josephine’s feast day, Feb. 8.

“He did it very delicately,” Wrigley said. “I’m very impressed with how he explained it to our students.

“She is a saint who had a very difficult beginning. She was enslaved; she was sold, and those are not easy concepts.”

The newly named Columbus St. Josephine Bakhita School added a statue of its patroness in its chapel.

St. Josephine is recorded saying, “If I were to meet the slave traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and religious today.”

To kick off the 2024-25 academic year, the school planned a community day centered on St. Josephine.

“We’re going to teach a little bit about who St. Josephine Bakhita was because she has an interesting story, and it’s a story that, with our demographics, I think is relatable and inspiring,” Wrigley said. 

The day is set to include family groups, which are composed of a few students from each grade level led by a staff member, working together toward a goal and a service project. 

Students can immerse themselves in their new patroness with hands-on activities. They will learn about their school’s namesake through community building in family groups and as a schoolwide community.

“We want the kids to learn the whole story, the story of St. Josephine Bakhita, but we also want them to build community,” Wrigley said.

A new St. Josephine statue is featured in the St. Matthias Chapel. Wrigley brought several new students into the chapel to show them the statue because it’s “really important” to see that St. Josephine looked like them.

She also began discussing the new patroness with students after the announcement last February. The second-grade class watched a video about St. Josephine and the response was positive.

“The kids got excited,” Wrigley said. “I had a little video … a little short video about her life, and once they saw that, it made a little more sense to them.”

St. Josephine Bakhita School is working to create shirts this year with the title “Founding Student” or “Founding Staff Member.” The idea is for people to remember that the students and staff were the first at St. Josephine Bakhita, Wrigley said.

The school colors, which were formerly red, white and black, are changing to include green. Red, white, black and green are the colors of the Sudanese flag.

The school is also in the process of changing their team nickname from “Colts” to “Stars.” Wrigley and Father Davis were inspired, she said, by a St. Josephine Bakhita quote that reads, “Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself, ‘Who could be the Master of these beautiful things?’ And I felt a great desire to see Him, to know Him and to pay Him homage.”