Catholic high schools all over the country have a problem when it comes to all-school Masses. Usually the school chapel is far too small to accommodate the entire student body, but a Mass in the gym or student center can lack a certain reverence. How does one convey a sense of the sacred when the altar is a kitchen table set up in the low post?

At Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Md., they’re trying something new. Thanks to the craftsmanship of a Brooklyn-born priest, Richard Zanoni, S.J., they have a new portable altar, built by hand out of pine and designed for public use. Last week at the Jesuit school in suburban Baltimore, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore blessed the altar at an all-school Mass attended by 1,000-plus students in, yes, the school gym of the Loyola Blakefield Dons.

Father Zanoni’s primary connection to Loyola Blakefield is through its president, Dennis Baker, S.J., whom I met while we were both studying at Fordham University. Father Baker had Father Zanoni as a math teacher many moons ago when the future president was a sophomore at Canisius High School in Buffalo, N.Y. “He taught me Algebra II and Trigonometry,” remembered Father Baker, who has been president at Loyola Blakefield since 2023. “He was not a big guy or demonstrative the way a lot of my other teachers were, but he commanded respect from the students for sure.” Outside the classroom was no different, Father Baker remembered; when his mother once pulled into the school parking lot with a flat tire, it was Father Zanoni who changed it.

Father Zanoni, 80, has had many assignments over the years, including at high schools in Micronesia and Arizona and in communities where young men study and train as part of their Jesuit formation. He is now the special assistant to the president at Canisius. In his 62 years of Jesuit ministry, he has also built a number of altars for different communities. 

His first, built in 1973 with his Jesuit friend Father Damian O’Connell, was designed for the Canisius High School Jesuit community and is still in use in the school’s chapel. He built another in 2005 for Canisius to use in school-wide Masses in the auditorium. A third was for the Jesuits East Province novitiate in Syracuse, N.Y., in 2014, to mark his 50th anniversary as a Jesuit. In 2018, he also built an altar and an ambo for St. Michael’s, a Jesuit church in downtown Buffalo.

Travis Butt, facilities manager at Loyola Blakefield, installs a relic of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Loyola Blakefield’s new altar, designed for use at all-school Masses and large events. Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore is in the background. Photo courtesy of Loyola Blakefield.

The altar for Loyola Blakefield is adorned with a frontal bearing the Jesuit motto “For the Greater Glory of God.” It also features a prominent antependium with an “IHS” Christogram inside a starburst long associated with the Society of Jesus. Inlaid atop the altar is a relic of St. Ignatius of Loyola. 

“The altar we had been using for big Masses was really two old altars from the former Jesuit community here at Loyola, pushed together,” Father Baker said. “Over the years they had gotten really beaten up, and they just didn’t look like something appropriate for Mass.” 

Last winter, Father Baker asked Father Zanoni: If we provide the materials, could you build us something new?

After driving to Buffalo to pick up the altar (which is built so that it can be disassembled for transit), Father Baker asked Archbishop Lori if he would come to bless it. The vagaries of scheduling meant that Sept. 11, 2026, was the best day—and a meaningful one for Loyola Blakefield, because Daniel W. McNeal, an alumnus who died in New York City in the 9/11 attacks, was being honored that day by the school. Mr. McNeal’s mother was in attendance at this year’s Mass.

Loyola Blakefield was founded in 1852 as Loyola High School in downtown Baltimore. Notable alumni include Cardinal James Stafford, broadcaster Jim McKay and author Tom Clancy. The school moved to its current campus in the 1930s and changed its name to Loyola Blakefield after adding a middle school to its traditional high school in the 1980s. Unlike many urban Jesuit schools, Loyola Blakefield has an expansive footprint of 65 acres, giving it the look and feel of a college campus. 

Loyola Blakefield once had its own Jesuit residence and upward of 30 priests, brothers and scholastics working in the school. But as is the case at Catholic institutions all over the country, five decades of declining vocations to the priesthood and religious life have made those days a distant memory. Today, only two Jesuits work at Loyola Blakefield, and many positions traditionally staffed by Jesuits are now filled by lay men and women. In that respect, the school resembles the 50-plus high schools sponsored by the Jesuits around the country. 

For the dedication Mass, a number of Jesuit priests from the area joined to concelebrate, including two Loyola Blakefield alumni.

The presence of the altar and the dedication ceremony in such a utilitarian space offered striking contrasts. The smell of incense throughout the Mass commingled with the omnipresent hint of sweat. Archbishop Lori and the concelebrants gathered around the holy table while a scoreboard and an adjustable backboard loomed overhead. Rather than stained glass and the Stations of the Cross, the walls were adorned with championship banners and exhortations to “Roll Dons Roll.” 

In the eyes of the students of Loyola Blakefield that morning, Archbishop Lori might be a saint. Why? Just before he sent them forth with a final blessing: he announced they would all get an extra day off from school. Santo subito!

Jesuit School Spotlight is a feature focusing on Jesuit middle and secondary schools from around the country. It is underwritten in part by Jesuit high schools of the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus.

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.