The May Crowing Mass was held in the gym on Thursday, May 1.
The Mass was the final all-school Mass of the school year and is meant to dedicate the seniors as well as honor Mary.
Seniors process in before the Mass starts with a rose that they place under a picture of Mary near the altar.
“Seniors give flowers to Mary because it has been a long-standing tradition at Pius to honor her on May 1 (a day historically dedicated to the start of the month of Mary),” campus minister Tori Roberts said. “They dress up and sit on the floor at Mass because part of the Mass is to honor our seniors graduating from Pius so they get special permission to sit separately as well as dress up nicely for Mass.”
This year, senior theology teacher Fr. Liam O’Shea-Creal was the main celebrant.
“Reflecting back, having been a student here and then actually processing into the gym and saying Mass, it was pretty surreal,” O’Shea-Creal said.
At the end of the Mass, seniors who plan to go to the military after high school were given a special blessing.
O’Shea-Creal was recently assigned to a Navy base in Virginia, making the military blessing even more special.
“I had no idea that it was going to happen, so then they told me right after communion that that was going to happen,” O’Shea-Creal said. “It was just very neat to look up and see at least five of them were my students, it meant a lot to do that blessing.”
The vocal department also sang two songs dedicated to the seniors, “Irish Blessing” and “You Do Not Walk Alone.”
“It was crazy honestly, because thinking back to freshman year and you were just starting to meet all of these people,” senior Arianna Elder said. “Now singing the same song, we sing ‘Irish Blessing’ every year, so singing that with all the seniors now was like a full circle moment.”
