I want to talk today about something that matters a great deal to me, and I think to all of us to our nation,

and that is the future of Catholic, K-12 Catholic schools in the United States. So just to frame the talk,

in the past two decades, about 2,000 Catholic schools have closed in the United States. And there are some signs of hope.

In some places, at least, the trend lines are sobering so in by the 1960s there were over 5.2

million students attending 13,000 Catholic schools in the United States since then

the number of Catholic schools in the United States has declined by half and

the enrollment by 70% in the last decade alone as I said about 2,000 Catholic schools have half and the enrollment by 70%. In the last decade alone,

as I said, about 2,000 Catholic schools have closed and the enrollment declined 22%. And this

year Catholic school enrollment fell below 2 million children. Most of these closures have occurred

in urban neighborhoods, but not all of them. And the rates of enrollment decline in most places

actually outpaced the rate of school closures.

There are many Catholic schools in the United States, particularly K to 8 Catholic schools

with fewer than 200 children and that's really considered the sustainability number for a

Catholic school, K-8 Catholic school.

So there's a lot of reasons why Catholic schools have closed.

I'm happy to talk in detail about them and questions and answers, but just I'll give a few.

So the first is around 1960 when Catholic school enrollment peaked.

Catholics suburbanized in dramatic numbers for the first time.

And this leads to a spatial mismatch between Catholic kids and Catholic schools, many Catholic

schools, were built in urban neighborhoods for white ethnic Catholics, and those people are no longer

in those neighborhoods.

There's a school in South in Indiana called Our Lady of Hungary, and there are no Hungarians

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