Father Anthony Raj Bellamkonda Irudayam, pastor of Columbus Our Lady of Peace Church, blessed the Teresa M. Gelonese Center for Academic Excellence on Sept. 18 in a new space at Our Lady of Peace School to provide intervention services for students.
The dedication took place on the feast day of St. Joseph of Cupertino. The center honors the memory of Teresa M. Gelonese, a teacher at Our Lady of Peace from 1977 until her passing in 2014.
The Teresa M. Gelonese Foundation provided most of the funds for the creation and outfitting of the room, which houses four full-time intervention teachers working with students from kindergarten through eighth grade.
Attending the dedication were Dr. Adam Dufault, the diocese’s superintendent of schools; Dr. Holly Peterson, assistant superintendent; parish volunteers who planned and constructed the room; cousins and friends of Gelonese; and members of the SPICE Committee at Our Lady of Peace (Special People in Catholic Education, the founders of SPICE, Bob and Mary Ginn Ryan, and educators from the diocese who have been longtime proponents of inclusion in Catholic schools, including Janet Weisner, Marian Hutson and Kitty Quinn).
St. Joseph of Cupertino struggled in school as a student and was seen as unfit academically for training in the seminary to become a priest. Through perseverance and the grace of God, he not only became a Franciscan friar but a saint.
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