To honor graduating high school seniors in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, The Catholic Spirit asked three Catholic high schools — Cristo Rey Jesuit in Minneapolis, St. Agnes in St. Paul and Unity Catholic in Burnsville — to suggest students who might share their faith journey. The three students credit their Catholic education with deepening their faith and express a commitment to living out its principles. The Catholic Spirit congratulates all 2023 high school graduates!
Giselle Verdugo Acosta, Cristo Rey Jesuit
Growing through service for others
Giselle Verdugo Acosta’s favorite classes at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis have been history and “all of my government classes,” she said. “I really enjoy learning about the mistakes of the past and, also, the successes and how it kind of has laid the foundation for the society that we live in today,” she said.
Verdugo Acosta’s AP U.S. history teacher spurred her interest. The teacher covered “both sides of our history,” whether that be positive or negative, Verdugo Acosta said.
It’s no surprise that Verdugo Acosta, 17, will major in political science when she attends Yale University in Connecticut this fall. She then plans to attend law school to become an immigration lawyer.
She said an end-of-year “multi-genre project” for an English class last year, involving interviews and a research paper, also supported her plans. “It allowed for me to advocate for what I’m passionate about and in a creative manner,” she said. Her topic pertained to “immigration and health care, and the lack of resources given to people who are in my community,” she said. Verdugo Acosta’s mother is from Mexico and her father from Ecuador; the family now lives in Minneapolis and attends Incarnation.
Verdugo Acosta said Cristo Rey not only provides students with the same end goal of all other schools, “which is to graduate as a better student, but it does that while allowing you to grow as an individual through service for others.”
Vice president of the school’s National Honor Society, she said its members chose two service projects this year: building and painting benches for the school campus and making cards for hospitalized children.
She also is a member of the school’s “Ignite Team,” which she described as a service-oriented group of about 18 seniors that leads retreats for students in younger grades. Some retreats involve activities such as “packing food or serving children.” “Others are focused more on personal, spiritual reflection and growth,” part of caring for the whole person — mind, body and spirit, she said.
Verdugo Acosta was awarded a four-year QuestBridge scholarship, which will cover tuition, books, room and board at Yale, and other costs.
Joseph Draganowski, St. Agnes School
‘Really wonderful peer pressure’
Joseph Draganowski, a lifelong parishioner of St. Agnes in St. Paul, and an altar server for six or seven years, said some of his favorite things from his four years of high school at St. Agnes are the “many great friendships” he has made. Homeschooled through eighth grade, he said he now has “so many friends, I probably know half to two-thirds of the people in the upper school.”
As “a very faith-filled community,” Draganowski said St. Agnes has “greatly helped form me in my faith.” He said he “got more into” his faith sophomore year, encouraged by “all the wonderful, faithful young people who are at the school that … encourage each other, and you see your good friends … doing it. It’s a lot of really wonderful peer pressure,” Draganowski said.
In addition to school Masses and prayer before classes, “a hefty contingent of students” pray in the chapel during lunch every day and before school, he said. That’s in addition to “all the theological conversations at just random times” that show the presence of faith among the St. Agnes students inside and outside of classrooms, Draganowski said.
Draganowski’s favorite class this year is called “The Great Conversation,” with credits in history and literature, but it “is mainly philosophical,” he said. It combines “a lot of reading,” mostly outside class, with 90 minutes of discussion with “a great group of people,” he said. Much of the content has pertained to Greek philosophy, he said, and “seeing how it makes so much sense with Christian theology.”
Draganowski, 18, had planned to study biology or medicine in college, followed by medical school. But he enjoyed the class so much that he will be majoring in theology and biology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he said “it seems like I want to go to med school.”
Draganowski ran cross country all four years at St. Agnes and three years in track, sang in the choir all four years and participated in the school’s spring musicals. He’s also in a group that performs “more liturgical or sacred music.”
Georgia Blando, Unity Catholic
Joining others in faith-filled lives
Georgia Blando was homeschooled in kindergarten through eighth grade, but then enrolled in the first freshman class at Unity Catholic High School in Burnsville. “I really wanted to go to a Catholic school,” Blando said, where she could be open, and learn, about her faith. She wanted to “find friends who agreed with me and who wanted to live a faith-filled life like I did.” “And I definitely found that at Unity,” she said.
Blando, 18, a parishioner of St. Peter in Mendota, said it’s also been fun to be part of a class that’s “like a leader all four years because we started as just the freshmen, so we’ve always been the oldest at school,” and be able to “help set the tone” for the school.
Students attend Mass every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, she said, followed by adoration. Students can participate in Mass as lectors or altar servers, or in a chant ensemble that sings at Mass, as Blando does.
The curriculum is non-traditional on Wednesdays, focusing on “skills and virtues and faith that will help you throughout your life,” Blando said, including sessions on music, personal finance and personal interests.
But faith is part of “pretty much all of our classes,” she said. Every class starts with prayer and almost all incorporate faith somehow, she said. “Even if it’s not theology or going to Mass, we’re always talking about God, which is what I think you should get at a Catholic school,” she said.
“In English (class), often when we discuss books, our teacher will … find a way to bring it back to God or ask if we can see a connection to faith in it,” Blando said. It’s a little harder to do so in math class, she said, but the class always prays at the beginning of class. And the math teacher “loves St. Patrick, so he’s like our patron saint of math at the school,” Blando said with a laugh.
Interested in becoming a child psychologist, Blando will attend the University of Notre Dame in Indiana to study psychology. She also wants to explore a path to teaching, perhaps through mission trips to other countries where she could teach English or other subjects.
Stories by Barb Umberger
Photos by Dave Hrbacek
