Baccalaureate Mass - Class of 2025

Fr. Angel Rivera-Fals, S.J. celebrated Baccalaureate Mass for the 189 graduating seniors in the Class of 2025 on Tuesday (May 27) evening in the beautiful Chapel of the Holy Cross on the Jesuit High School campus.

It was a special night for the soon-to-be graduates (graduation is the next night, Wednesday, May 28 at 8:00pm at the Straz Center downtown) and their families, as the seniors came together one final time for Mass inside the grand chapel.

(Click here for a video from Baccalaureate Mass.)

The class is pictured on the homepage with Fr. Rivera-Fals and Jesuit principal and interim president Mike Scicchitano on the steps of the chapel immediately after the Mass. Jesuit students wore the traditional cap & gown at Baccalaureate Mass, and at Graduation they wear a tuxedo, maintaining a custom that dates back to the 1930s and was revived a decade ago.

Baccalaureate Mass has long been a tradition at Jesuit. In 2017 and 2018, due to the chapel construction, the school had returned to its roots for Bacc Mass – Sacred Heart Church in downtown Tampa. Sacred Heart was completed by the Jesuits in 1905 and is the oldest Catholic Church on Florida's west coast. Jesuit High School's Baccalaureate Mass was celebrated for 51 consecutive years at Sacred Heart, from 1912 through 1962.

For the next 54 years, from 1963 through 2016, St. Anthony's Chapel on Jesuit's Himes Avenue campus – where the school relocated in 1956 – hosted Baccalaureate Mass. In 2019, the newly constructed Chapel of the Holy Cross hosted Baccalaureate Mass for the first time. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Baccalaureate Mass was celebrated outdoors on campus in Oliva Courtyard, directly in front of the grand chapel.

Several hundred family members and supporters attended Tuesday's Mass, while Jesuit's musicians, under the direction of Adrian Quesada and Nina Wegmann, provided an amazing backdrop of liturgical music to the amazing event from high above in the chapel's choir loft.

For more photos go to the Facebook page Jesuit High School of Tampa.