Bishop Machebeuf High School is closing, but its legacy will go on
- Roxanne King
- May 22
- 8 min read
Updated: May 23
When Bishop Machebeuf High School’s class of 2025 receive their diplomas on May 23, they will be the last of more than 6,000 students to graduate from the 66-year-old school.
The moment will hold both heartbreak and hope as Machebeuf will close for good when the school year ends in June.
“I trust that God knew from the founding of the school that my class would be the last senior class,” Karl Sri, 18, told the Denver Catholic. “I'm just trusting that it's God's will and that he has a plan, and this is all for his glory for the greater good.”
“We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose,” affirmed principal Ralph Pesce, quoting Romans 8:28. “So amidst this sadness, there's also the feeling God is still calling us to work to build up the Kingdom of God. … Each person at Machebeuf is supposed to take what they've learned here and go out and spread that somewhere else. So, it's a lot of trusting in God and being satisfied that God knows what he is about … and it's our responsibility to respond to his call to us to work for his purpose.”
With a total enrollment of 180 students, Machebeuf’s 2025 graduating class consists of just 36 seniors. Two young men will be pursuing religious life: one is entering the seminary, and the other is discerning with the Servants of Christ Jesus order. Two graduates will be doing mission work: one in Denver and one in Australia and New Zealand. Nearly all the graduates are going on to college.
Consolidation
Last fall, the Denver Archdiocese announced that two grade schools would be closed, and Bishop Machebeuf would be consolidated into St. John Paul the Great High School to ensure the financial stability and educational vitality of its Catholic schools.
Low enrollment in these schools due to ongoing demographic changes required millions of dollars in archdiocesan aid over the last decade to cover financial deficits, which was unsustainable and led to the restructuring, the Denver Catholic previously reported.
“Because of your generous fidelity to the Lord Jesus, countless students have encountered him, grown in intellect and faith and learned to serve him and others,” Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila said in a letter to the schools’ administrators. “These families and our archdiocesan community are immeasurably better off for your efforts to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth.”
History
Although some Colorado schools — both public and parochial — are experiencing negative enrollment trends today due to a decline in the number of the state’s school-aged children, Bishop Machebeuf High School was founded to address a post-World War II population boom.
In 1953, Blessed Sacrament Parish pastor Msgr. Harold Campbell secured land to build a new high school to serve the Catholic families among the thousands of newcomers to East Denver and Aurora. Named after pioneer priest of Colorado and first bishop of the Denver Archdiocese, Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, Machebeuf High School opened in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood in 1958. It held its first graduation in 1962.
It was renamed Machebeuf Catholic High School in 1985 and added a West Campus two years later. In 1996, it was renamed Bishop Machebeuf High School, and four years later, it moved into a newly built facility in the Lowry neighborhood. Over its nearly seven-decade history, it developed a legacy of community, faith and excellence.
Alumni
Machebeuf graduates have contributed to society in professions ranging from business and education to law and medicine to priesthood and consecrated life.
Recently retired bishop of Sioux City, Iowa, Bishop Walker Nickless, graduated from Machebeuf in 1965. Former vicar for priests for the Denver Archdiocese, Msgr. Bernie Schmitz, graduated in 1966. Three of monsignor’s six siblings also graduated from the school.
Now retired and serving as part-time spiritual director at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Msgr. Schmitz fondly recalls his Machebeuf days as a time of playing football and relishing healthy sports rivalries with other Catholic schools, primarily Holy Family.
“We had some great teachers … who helped me academically,” he said, crediting them — both lay and Loretto Sisters — with kindling within him a desire to learn and an appreciation for reading that he had previously lacked. “It gave me stability. … And I think the smallness of the school enabled friendships to be something that endured.”
Having experienced a call to priesthood since his elementary school days, Msgr. Schmitz said Machebeuf also fostered his vocation.
“Nobody can outwit God, that’s for sure,” he said, chuckling. “That thought that had been in my head since I was in grade school was encouraged while I was at Machebeuf.”
Famed former Machebeuf athlete Shelly Pennefather led the girls’ basketball team to three State Championships. Then, while at Villanova University, she earned All-America status before playing professionally in Japan. In 1991, at age 28, Pennefather left professional basketball to become Sr. Rose Marie of the Queen of Angels, a Poor Clare nun. (The school has a legacy of athletic excellence in numerous sports, including a record 75-game winning streak by the girls basketball team in the 1980s that stands today as the third longest in Colorado history.)
Like Msgr. Schmitz, Annie Schmitz McBournie — no relation to Msgr. Schmitz — has happy memories of building floats for homecoming and the excitement of Friday night football games during her time at Machebeuf. Affirming Msgr. Schmitz’s experience, she believes the strong “family” aspect of the school community cultivates lifelong connections among alumni.
“Regardless of what building it's been in or what building it won't have in the future, it's really a ‘family’ and I think that the family aspect of that school has always been amazingly strong,” McBournie said. “Similar to a family, [fellow alumni] can be away for a while, and when you come back together again, you still have this familiarity with these people.”
Three of McBournie’s five siblings also attended Machebeuf. Today the president of the Schmitz Family Foundation, which awards financial scholarships to students attending schools across the state, including Machebeuf, McBournie will deliver remarks at the school’s farewell celebration set for May 29. (Dr. Edward Sri, theologian and father of student Karl Sri, will also speak at the farewell event.) A 1983 grad, McBournie attended when the school was in Park Hill, as did Msgr. Schmitz.
Students felt safe, loved and prepared as they graduated and moved forward into young adulthood, McBournie said.
“Here and across the country, they have made an impact in their communities because of their grounding at Machebeuf,” she said. “The building itself wasn’t what Machebeuf was. It’s always been the people and the experiences, the memories and the faith. … It will always be a gift to the community because of the people who lived it.”
Curriculum and core values
Machebeuf transitioned fully to a classical education model called “integrated humanities” that cultivates critical thinking and communication skills and emphasizes character and faith formation in the 2020-2021 academic year.
“Our core values are to know, love, serve, learn and pray,” said Sr. Mary Gemma Stump, a Dominican Sister of St. Cecilia of Nashville, Tenn., who has taught at the school the past six years. “Machebeuf has truly been a school of the Lord's service. Students’ lives have been transformed here.”
She considers it a privilege to have witnessed her students' remarkable journeys as they found or deepened their faith and had lightbulb moments of insight while learning, maturing not only in their faith and knowledge but also as human beings by the time they graduate.
Religious orders have been a constant in the school’s history, beginning with the Sisters of Loretto at its founding, the Nashville Dominican Sisters for the last twenty years, and the Servants of Christ Jesus for about as long.
Sad the school is closing, Sr. Mary Gemma is also grateful for the good she has experienced at Machebeuf.
“It’s not the end of great Catholic education in Denver, so there’s also gratitude for the other Catholic schools here and especially for St. John Paul the Great High School for welcoming our students,” she said.
Inclusive community
Machebeuf’s diverse student body reflects the universal Church, with families coming from six different continents and representing the entire range of socio-economic classes, said Dakota Pesce, director of enrollment.
“Culture Day is always a highlight of the year, with students bringing in traditional food and wearing traditional clothing from their cultures,” she noted. “During any given year, twenty to twenty-five countries or cultures are represented.”
More than 100 students attended the 2025 National March for Life in Washington, D.C., and about the same number participated in the Colorado March for Life. Another longstanding tradition has been the climbing of Colorado’s Mt. Machebeuf, led by one of the athletic teams at the start of the school year for all students and staffers desiring to participate.
“What I love the most has definitely been the community,” said senior Maria Gallegos, 18, whose older siblings also attended the school. “Everyone has such a welcoming heart.”
The National Honor Society scholar credits the school with creating a supportive community, strengthening her Catholic identity and shaping her passion for teaching. She plans to pursue a degree in teaching special education.
Like Gallegos, Karl Sri appreciates the opportunities the school provided to grow in faith and in his personhood, crediting the vibrant Catholic formation, caring teachers and strong community.
Captain of the boys’ soccer team for the last two years, Sri experienced the thrill of the Buffaloes’ hard-fought battle for the State Championship for the first time in the school’s history in his junior year; unfortunately, they lost 0-1. (The boys’ soccer and basketball teams and the girls’ soccer team made appearances in the 2A State Championship Tournament this year.)
After graduation, Sri plans to earn a degree in exercise science or theology. Although he was devastated to learn the school is closing (his older siblings also attended Machebeuf), his faith has helped him to put it into perspective.
“The Scriptures say that God scatters (Acts 8:4) so God's greater glory can be — I'm paraphrasing here — so God’s greater glory can be spread further,” he said. “I think that's truly what's happening here. It's such a great place that even though he scatters, those embers will be able to build up in other places.”
A job well done
Ralph Pesce will become principal at St. John Paul the Great High School this fall. He anticipates that many Machebeuf students and faculty will transition to the 3-year-old school in Central Denver, which also follows a classical education model.
During a recent service project, Pesce said students wrote cards for patients at Children's Hospital and made sandwiches for the homeless to be distributed at Holy Ghost Parish.
“One of the school’s impacts is that our students … take what they've learned and how they’ve been formed … to be an image of Christ to our community,” he said. “My wife and I just serendipitously stumbled upon a bust of Bishop Joseph Machebeuf outside of Holy Ghost Church. There is an inscription beneath the bust that says, ‘Without pride and without shame.’ We thought this really does capture the man, the namesake, the first Denver bishop, but also what Bishop Machebeuf High School has been to our community in Denver.
“Machebeuf has humbly accepted its role in the Church to serve Denver's community of students. Whether at the old location in Park Hill or its transition to the new school, its focus has always been to bring Christ to the people of Denver and the wider community. I think it's really done that beautifully.”
