Our Mission
Pope Francis Preparatory School is a Catholic co-educational, college-preparatory school which instills Gospel values and fosters academic excellence in a diverse community of learners. Our mission is to challenge students to grow spiritually, intellectually, socially, and physically to become critical thinkers and faith-based leaders who embody justice, peace, service, and mercy in the global community.
Building on a Deep Legacy of Excellence
In the spring of 2015, then Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski announced that Cathedral High School and Holyoke Catholic High School would merge into a new regional Catholic school beginning in 2016. He accepted a recommendation of the joint Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic high schools’ Student Advisory Committee to call the new regional Catholic high school Pope Francis in honor of the pope who was reigning at that time.
In the fall of 2016, students converged under the banner of Pope Francis High School at the former location of Holyoke Catholic in Chicopee while a new facility was constructed at the site of the former Cathedral on Wendover Road in Springfield. In anticipation of the new building opening in 2018, the name of the school was changed to Pope Francis Preparatory School to better reflect the full mission of the school.
Building on our history’s cornerstones, Pope Francis Preparatory School offers its students the best of what its legacy schools had to offer. Students carry on the values and many traditions of both Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic, while forging a new and reimagined future for secondary Catholic education in the Diocese of Springfield. Pope Francis Preparatory School provides a beautiful, state-of-the-art, safe environment for students to worship, learn, and succeed for generations to come.