By Florida Catholic staff - Florida Catholic
Photographer: CRISTINA CABRERA JARRO| FC
Newly named school Principal Renee Sarmiento shakes hands with Jim Rigg, Superintendent of archdiocesan schools, at a welcome Mass for new principals July 2, 2025 at the Pastoral Center. Sarmiento will be leading St. Andrew School in Coral Springs this upcoming academic year.
MIAMI SHORES| Four new school principals gathered at the archdiocesan Pastoral Center July 2, 2025, for a welcome gathering and commissioning hosted by staff from the Office of Catholic Schools.
At the daylong meeting, the group also attended Mass at St. Martha Parish, celebrated by Father Emmanuel Essiet, a judge at the Miami Metropolitan Tribunal. In his homily, Father Essiet reminded the congregation that the primary responsibility of the Church is to evangelize and proclaim the good news.
“Anybody who collaborates in this responsibility, like in our case today with those who work in the ministry of schools, should consider themselves primarily evangelizers. You are not just there to bring academic knowledge of reading books, literature, science, and so on to the students. You are there to bring the person home to be truly human, created by God in his image and likeness,” said Father Essiet.
Photographer: CRISTINA CABRERA JARRO| FC
Newly named school principals bow their heads during a blessing at a Mass celebrated on July 2, 2025 at St. Martha Parish in Miami Shores. From left is Faradjah Muller, principal of Holy Family School in North Miami; David Revezzo, principal of Mary Help of Christians School, Parkland; Renee Sarmiento, principal of St. Andrew School in Coral Springs; and Deonte Green (not pictured), principal of Cristo Rey Miami High School, Miami.
As the 2025-26 academic year theme for archdiocesan Catholic schools will be “On Good Ground”—inspired by the Parable of the Sower in the Gospel of Matthew—Father Essiet encouraged the principals to not only “be the good ground” but “create good ground” at the schools where they will work.
“For you to be good evangelizers, you have to be, in the first place, the good ground, that has received the message, in order to bear fruits. The students that you are helping will eat from the fruits that you have born, and if the fruit is good, then the student, in their own turn, will become the good ground that has received the seed, and in their own turn will bear fruits. There is no end to how this good fruit and good ground can propagate,” said Father Essiet.
At the conclusion of Mass, Superintendent Jim Rigg and the Office of Catholic Schools gifted each principal with a Serenity Prayer canvas, and Father Essiet blessed them.
Look for brief bios of the new principals in the back-to-school edition of the Florida Catholic newspaper, available in our parishes the weekend of Sept. 20-21, 2025.
