Requiem for a Catholic academy, with worry about its neighboring Catholic university:
The Wheeling College campus was carved out of the Mount de Chantal estate back in the 1950s. If Wheeling Jesuit [University] and/or the Diocese [of Wheeling] had the funds, they could purchase this beautiful property, continue its use for educational purposes, and guarantee expansion space for WJU indefinitely into the future.
Alas, it is not to be. Mount de Chantal stands on 36 acres, a proud and picturesque 140-year-old school building now crumbling into brick dust, and a small, peaceful cemetery where generations of devoted Visitation nuns lay at final rest, mission accomplished.
The Mount could not survive into a new century when there are no religious vocations, so few girls from well-to-do Wheeling families seeking an exclusive education, the Linsly school [in Wheeling] poaching the few prospects who remain, and the economy of the Ohio Valley sinking slowly into ruin.
Farewell, Mount de Chantal, and let us pray that your neighbor, Wheeling Jesuit, is not destined for the same fate!
It’s an eloquent anonymous comment at Save! Wheeling Jesuit University, which since last August has been mourning and protesting the ouster of Rev. Julio Giulietti SJ as president, blamed by some as the work ultimately of the bishop of Wheeling, who wanted to buy the Mount de Chantal property but allegedly felt thwarted in that by Giulietti.
The comment was in response to news finally verified that Wheeling (Catholic) Hospital, a diocesan institution, was buying the property and planning to tear down the building which housed the already closed academy.
Fr. Giulietti gone, the diocese (the bishop) gets the property, which to many is not a coincidence.
-as published by Jim Bowman at Blithe-Spirit.com
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