You are not signed in as a Premium user; you are viewing the free version of this program.
Premium users have access to full-length programs with limited commercials and receive a 10% discount in the store!
Sign in or Sign up today!
Once big donors to a Catholic school in Florida, this couple is now suing. They argue the school has strayed from the Faith and embraced a woke culture. Church Militant’s William Mahoney has more on the complaint and the school.
At a fundraising gala in 2017, Anthony and Barbara Scarpo pledged over $1 million to Academy of the Holy Names in Tampa, where their two daughters were once students.
The couple had requested the money be used for scholarships for disadvantaged students and the school’s master plan.
But now the Scarpos want their pledge rescinded, spotlighting the academy gives priority to “gender identity,” “human sexuality” and “pregnancy termination” among other hot button issues.
They lament Holy Names has lost its way, having embraced a politically left agenda that clashes with authentic Catholic teaching.
The lawsuit further expresses the couple’s disappointment with the school’s handling of race, apparently persuading students to feel guilty for being White and having financial privilege that enables them to attend the academy.
Statistical information on the academy’s website includes an entry for total enrollment, hours served by the Class of 2020 and the percentage of students of color.
Holy Names consists of a coed school for children in prekindergarten through eighth grade and an all-girls high school. The academy is located in the St. Petersburg diocese headed by Bp. Gregory Parkes.
In 2016, Parkes succeeded Bp. Robert Lynch, a prelate with a history of homosexual scandals, one involving a $100,000 payoff to a former employee who accused the bishop of making sexual advances.
Catholics in the diocese are hoping Bp. Parkes takes note of the Scarpos’ lawsuit, and restores the academy to orthodoxy in the interest of saving souls.
Holy Names academy was founded in 1881, when Pope Leo XIII was pontiff — long before the diocese of St. Petersburg even existed, the diocese having been established in 1968.
