History & Heritage

Educators in Faith

Bishop McNamara High School, built adjacent to Mount Calvary Catholic Church in Forestville, Maryland, thrives today as a result of Msgr. Peter Paul Rakowski’s vision was to build Catholic high schools, one for boys and one for girls, in southern Prince George’s County.

In 1962, Patrick A. O’Boyle, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., extended an invitation to the Brothers of Holy Cross, (members of the Congregation of Holy Cross), an association of Catholic religious brothers and priests founded in 1837 by Blessed Basile Moreau to make God known, loved, and served), to administer and staff the new high school for boys. The Brothers of Holy Cross called the new institution Bishop McNamara High School to honor the legacy of Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., John M. McNamara, who at the time of his death in 1960 had ordained more priests than any other Bishop still living in the United States.

In 1964, Bishop McNamara High School admitted its first classes of 334 boys (freshmen and sophomores) staffed by ten Holy Cross Brothers and two lay teachers. These individuals set the course for these boys to develop into young men of character.

Two years earlier, Cardinal O’Boyle asked the Bernardine Franciscan Sisters, a Catholic women’s religious order founded in the latter part of the nineteenth century who answer God’s call by following in the footsteps of Francis and Clare of Assisi, to administer and staff a high school for girls in the same area.

La Reine High School, established in nearby Suitland, Maryland, was the result of this inspiring call to action and the School opened its doors in 1960 admitting 130 freshman girls, adding a class each year.

Over the next 32 years, La Reine High School pursued excellence and received numerous honors in academics, art & design, and athletics. The School’s crowning achievement came in 1985 as La Reine High School was named a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence by the Council of Private Education, one of only 65 schools nationwide to be so honored. In 1991, La Reine High School announced its closing, and Bishop McNamara pledged its future to embrace a co-educational mission of secondary education. In 1992, the first women from La Reine High School entered the halls of Bishop McNamara. The legacy of La Reine High School and the charism of the Bernardine Franciscan Sisters as educators in the faith presently live on in the memory and future vision of Bishop McNamara High School.

Bishop McNamara High School today promotes a co-educational Catholic liberal arts curriculum rooted in the Holy Cross tradition that seeks the “harmonious development of the whole person,” which was the challenge given at the School’s founding in 1964 by Brother Ephraim O’Dwyer, C.S.C., then Provincial of the Brothers of Holy Cross, Eastern Province. This challenge echoes the educational philosophy established more than 180 years ago by Blessed Basile Moreau who stated in his defining work Christian Education, “We shall always place education side by side with instruction, the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.”

Bishop McNamara High School educates the “hearts and minds” of close to 900 students from nine different counties in the Washington Metropolitan region in a dynamic, inclusive Catholic school community rooted in the Holy Cross tradition. The School remains devoted to its four pillars - Being Family, Building Respect, Educating Hearts and Minds, and Bringing Hope - as we prepare students “to think with Christ,” which was Bishop John M. McNamara’s ecclesiastical motto. Through the shared conviction among all members of our community that “the cross is our only hope,” we strive to be men and women with hope to bring preparing the world for better times than these.

Bishop McNamara High School is sponsored by the Brothers of Holy Cross, Moreau Province, who are members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, an association of Catholic religious brothers and priests who lead extraordinary lives by bringing hope to others. 

Founded by Blessed Basile Moreau on March 1, 1837, in a small village outside of Le Mans, France,  the mission of the Congregation is to make God known, loved, and served.  Fr. Moreau brought together a group of brothers, auxiliary priests, and for a period of time, sisters, compromising one holy family in imitation of the Holy Family.  He believed that the work that God had entrusted to Holy Cross extended beyond the borders of France to the rest of the world. Within a few short years of founding Holy Cross, Moreau sent his priests, brothers, and sisters from France to many destinations around the world.  

In 1841, Fr. Moreau’s vision carried the men and women of Holy Cross beyond France to Algeria (1840), the United States (1841), Canada (1847), Italy (1850), and East Bengal, or present-day India and Bangladesh (1852).  

On May 13, 1857, Pope Pius IX approved the first Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross. This approbation made Holy Cross an official religious congregation under the direct authority of the Holy See. As part of its approval, however, the Vatican required that the sisters be in a separate congregation with a separate governance structure from the priests and the brothers. That same year, on June 17, the Congregation’s Conventual Church of Notre-Dame de Sainte-Croix was consecrated in Le Mans.

In 1903, all religious orders in France were suppressed, and North America became the focus of Holy Cross’s subsequent expansion. Numerous educational institutions, parishes, and other ministries were founded in the United States and Canada during these decades.

In the twentieth century, Holy Cross expanded its work by establishing missions in Chile (1943), Brazil (1943), Haiti (1944), Ghana (1957), Uganda (1958), Peru (1963), Kenya (1978), Mexico (1987), and Tanzania (1999). With the most recent establishment of a religious presence in the Philippines (2008).  
On September 15, 2007, Blessed Basile Moreau was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church. Three years later, the first Holy Cross saint, St. André Bessette, known as the “Miracle Man of Montreal,” was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 17, 2010.  

Today, the Congregation of Holy Cross is an apostolic religious congregation composed of two distinct societies of over 1,200 religious brothers and religious priests “bound together in one indivisible brotherhood.” Through their vowed religious life, their apostolic work, and their conviction that “the cross is our only hope,” they strive to be men with hope to bring in the 16 countries in which they live and serve.   

As living witnesses, the Congregation’s mission remains the Church’s mission by working as educators in the faith. In all of its ministries, whether schools, parishes, or other works of missionary outreach and social justice, the Congregation works side by side with its lay collaborators educating hearts and minds and building communities of the coming kingdom.

1. A Holy Cross Teacher evangelizes, educates and inspires through personal witness.
2. A Holy Cross Teacher constantly strives to professionalize, expand and enrich his/her own knowledge in order to better teach and lead the young people he/she is called to serve.
3. A Holy Cross Teacher rejoices in and is nourished by cultural, spiritual and racial diversity.
4. A Holy Cross Teacher believes in the innate potential of young people and strives to reach out to each child with a wide range of learning opportunities.
5. A Holy Cross Teacher believes that a school must also be a family.
6. A Holy Cross Teacher is proud of his/her profession and all that he/she does reflects that professional pride.
7. A Holy Cross Teacher instructs not only in a specific discipline, but empowers through instruction and personal witness so that students can become informed and responsible citizens.
8. A Holy Cross Teacher instills in each young person a sense of self worth and dignity.
9. A Holy Cross Teacher fosters among his/her students a self respect and self discipline that allows each student to honor and respect others.
10. A Holy Cross Teacher gives freely of him/herself, and through that generous sharing of self, he/she becomes a model that young people can emulate.
11. A Holy Cross Teacher understands that a school is a building that has within its four walls the power to change the world.