Catholic school
Catholic schools are pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutions administered under the aegis or in association with the Catholic Church. , the Catholic Church operates the world's largest religious, non-governmental school syste ...
census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, such ...
,
unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to:
* Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality
* Unincorporated entity, a type of organization
* Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...
Miami-Dade County, Florida
Miami-Dade County is a County (United States), county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. The county had a population of 2,701,767 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the most populous county in ...
. It was in the West Kendall area, Page 2 /ref> near Kendall.
It was owned and operated independently of the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami
The Archdiocese of Miami ( la, Archidioecesis Miamiensis, es, Arquidiócesis de Miami, ht, Achidyosèz Miami) is a particular church of the Catholic Church in the United States of America. Its ecclesiastical territory consists of Broward, Miami ...
. It incorporated a monastery.
It had a campus and served grades kindergarten through 12.
History
Reverend Abbott Gregory Wendt established the school in 1985. It started as an institution affiliated with the
Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church
The Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church ( rue, Русиньска ґрекокатолицька церьков; la, Ecclesia Graeco-Catholica Ruthenica), also known in the United States simply as the Byzantine Catholic Church, is an Eastern Cath ...
. Its accreditation records circa 2004, however, described it as an independent Catholic institution.
Prior to 2001 the average enrollment was about 500. On March 25, 2001, Ukrainian Mykhaylo Kofel murdered nun-in-training Michelle Lewis; authorities discovered her body in the convent house on campus. Kofel pleaded guilty in 2005 and was scheduled to have a thirty-year sentence. Prosecutors initially sought the
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
but no longer pursued it after Kofel made allegations of
sexual abuse
Sexual abuse or sex abuse, also referred to as molestation, is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. Molestation often refers to an instance of sexual assa ...
against the monastery priests. This accusation caused multiple parents to send their children to other schools, and the average post-murder enrollment was 340. Circa 2004 there were 37 people in the school's faculty. The school closed in 2004, and the
charter school
A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of auto ...
Miami Herald
The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a List of communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida, city in western Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County and the M ...
'' wrote that Holy Cross "enjoyed a stellar academic reputation."