BLOOMINGTON — On its journey of 150 years, the community of Holy Trinity School in Bloomington has grown from a one-room parish academy for boys to a thriving community of pre-, grade and junior high school students on two campuses.

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, led a celebration of that journey at an all-school sesquicentennial Mass on Wednesday, Sept. 17, at Holy Trinity Church. Fittingly, the junior high chorus sang “Enter the Journey” as a prelude.

“Our Catholic school has one ideal product: the student fashioned after the image of Jesus Christ; an individual who thinks, judges, acts and lives like Christ,” said Holy Trinity eighth-grader Joe Frey as he welcomed the assembly.

The school’s 632 students were joined by a crowd of parents, current and former pastors and parochial vicars, Holy Trinity alumni and friends of the school.

Almost everyone at the Mass, including the parish pastor, Msgr. Douglas Hennessy, were “the products of schools that teach well, that proclaim Jesus Christ, that teach love for God and neighbor,” said Bishop Jenky.

Msgr. Hennessy concelebrated the Mass with the bishop, as did Father Kevin Lucas, parochial vicar; Father David Heinz, a former pastor and parochial vicar; and Father Jerry Ward, pastor of St. Patrick’s Church of Merna, a Bloomington parish that has many children enrolled at Holy Trinity School.

After the Mass, the students lined up in the sanctuary and pews for group photographs with the bishop and priests. The congregation then moved to the church basement for an anniversary banquet.

The current Holy Trinity Elementary and Holy Trinity Junior High were built in 1963. A $3.1 million construction project in 2000 added a new gymnasium, classrooms, offices, kitchen and chapel to the grade school, and renovations to the junior high. The kindergarten program was started in 1986, and a new preschool program was put into place in 2003. The principal is Kay O’Brien.