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St. Elizabeth Ann Seton goes all out to welcome Pope Francis

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Leeann Graziose, principal of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School in Bellmore for the past 12 years, was at home when the envelope from the Diocese of Rockville Centre arrived last Friday afternoon. She held it in her hands, wondering what lay inside.

Was it a letter for work? Or, she hoped, a set of tickets to Pope Francis’s Sept. 25 Mass at Madison Square Garden?

She had entered a lottery for two tickets. She hadn’t imagined that she might win them.

Graziose, 47, put the envelope down for a minute and then called her 6-year-old son, Daniel, who was adopted from China a year and half ago. They unsealed it together.

And there it was, a letter informing Graziose that, yes, she had won the tickets. “We’re seeing the pope,” she said. “Life doesn’t get any better than that.”

Graziose was beaming on Monday morning as she sat in her office at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton retelling the story. Indeed, an air of excitement radiated throughout the regional Catholic school, which educates 340 students in grades pre-kindergarten to eight and sits beside St. Barnabas Church, just south of Bellmore Village. Children and teachers alike were eagerly anticipating Francis’s arrival in the United States, the principal said.

A welcome visit
A banner welcoming the pontiff was hung at the back entrance to the school on a wrought-iron fence that surrounds the schoolyard, on Bedford Avenue. The yellow-and-white papal flag, adorned with St. Peter’s “keys to heaven,” flew with the American flag. At the front staircase inside the school, an oversized portrait of Francis greeted visitors. And there were fliers welcoming him posted at nearly every turn.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton takes in students from a wide swath of the South Shore, including St. Barnabas Parish in Bellmore, Curé of Ars Parish in Merrick, Sacred Heart Parish in North Merrick, Our Holy Redeemer Parish in Freeport, St. Raphael Parish in East Meadow and St. Frances de Chantal Parish in Wantagh.

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