Leadership from Cristo Rey Network schools across the country gathered for the 2025 Cristo Rey Network Annual Meeting held this year in Columbus.
The meeting on Wednesday, April 2 brought together 280 leaders from 40 network schools for professional development sessions aimed at growth, innovation and enhancing the Cristo Rey network’s mission. The network enrolls more than 12,300 students nationwide.
Administrators came to the Buckeye State from schools established in 24 states, which partner with 34 different sponsoring groups. Cristo Rey Columbus High School, which opened in 2013, is sponsored by the Diocese of Columbus.
This year’s meeting, held at the Renaissance Columbus Downtown Hotel, located a few blocks north of Cristo Rey Columbus High School, was also a reminder of the “why” behind the network. Leaders discussed an array of topics, including the Corporate Work Study program. The network is renowned for the program, which places each high school student in a professional job one day a week during school months.
While the program is a defining factor of the network, administrators discussed that even more important, however, is why the school was created in the first place: to give students a Catholic education.
The Cristo Rey Network, a not-for-profit organization, was established in 2000 and modeled after Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago, founded four years earlier. Schools in the network integrate college preparatory academics with professional work experience, which can help fund the cost of Catholic education for youth from low-income families.
In his opening remarks the morning of the conference, Father John Foley, SJ (Society of Jesus), founder of the first Cristo Rey high school that led to the creation of the network, reminded leaders that the Holy Spirit is the reason for the first school’s founding and expansion into the Cristo Rey Network that exists today.
He said the story of St. Paul’s conversion recorded in the Acts of the Apostles is Cristo Rey’s story, too.
The story recounts St. Paul, then Saul, being knocked off a horse on his way to Damascus. Laying on the road, he heard a voice, which was Christ, telling him to go to the city, where he would be told what to do.
“Those instructions are still valid for us today,” Father Foley said. “We don’t have to wait until all our ‘I’s are dotted and our ‘T’s are crossed before we act. We are called to listen to what the Spirit is calling us to do. We just have to let ourselves be led. All of this is another way of saying that the Cristo Rey movement is an example of God at work among us.”
In the ‘90s, Father Foley left his ministry in Peru, where he spent 30 years in school leadership, to start a Jesuit-sponsored high school for families lacking educational options in his hometown of Chicago. A few years later, he challenged an order of consecrated religious brothers to replicate the school.
“None of us ever dreamed we would establish a national chain of high schools,” Father Foley said. “Here we are today, with Catholic schools closing all around us, and we continue opening new schools, adding new members to our network.”
He added that “B.J. Cassin, one of our first and most generous contributors, calls the work study program our secret sauce.”
If the program is the secret sauce, then the Catholic faith is the key ingredient.
In a session offered on the network’s Corporate Work Study program, Cristo Rey leaders discussed the integration of the program with the faith.
“Corporate Work Study allows us to serve the families that Catholic education should be serving – but for us, they would not have a Catholic education, and but for Corporate Work Study, there is no us,” said Kelby Woodard, president and CEO of the Cristo Rey Network.
He also noted that Cristo Rey schools teach students the dignity of work.
Woodard described the Catholic Church’s principle of social justice as being embedded into the work study program. “This teaches the dignity of work,” he explained. “There is nothing that any Catholic high school in the country does more around social justice.”
Sending students out to participate in professional jobs can also be a form of evangelization.
Woodard noted the effect that Catholic students can have on a larger corporation. He said many corporate work partners relay how their employees are positively impacted by having a Cristo Rey student present in the office.
Bryan Froehle, Ph.D., chair of the Mission Identity Committee at Cristo Rey Miami High School, offered a session on “Unpacking the Spiritual Dimensions of the Cristo Rey Movement.”
Froehle expanded on Father Foley’s vision. He affirmed that Cristo Rey schools were not founded as part of a strategic plan but by individuals who, like St. Paul, answered God’s call.
“Cristo Rey is a movement that is sparked – I want to say ‘sparked’ – by the Holy Spirit,” Froehle explained. “Its beginnings are charismatic, meaning, rooted in the gifts – charisms – of the Holy Spirit, and we can see that because it comes out of an inspired ‘yes.’”
In the same way, that call should be the draw for all students to the school.
During roundtable discussion, Cristo Rey school presidents and principals conversed about making faith central to their schools. The leaders discussed the importance of the Catholic faith being the main draw for students and families.
Froehle explained to school leaders that their school is a ministry and should operate as such.
Several leaders noted that most of their students desire to attend Cristo Rey for its work study program. While that can be good, Catholic faith and education should be the main reason for attending the school.
“All our schools are ministries,” Froehle emphasized, “and if they’re not ministries, they’re not our schools.”