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From 1852 to 1860 St. John Neumann was the bishop of the Diocese of Philadelphia and worked tirelessly to open Catholic schools.  In 1863 the parish of St. Peter the Apostle, where St. John had been buried, built a school. In 1916 the parish built a new school, but incorporated the cornerstone from the 1863 building. In 2012 the “pastoral planners” of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia tried to close the parish school, open for almost 150 years, to replace it with one of their regional schools. Because of the work of the parishioners of  St. Laurentius in Fishtown, the planners were unable to close St. Laurentius school, leaving the planners with no excuse to make St. Peter’s the site of a regional school, and the parish school survived. A defeat for the planners and a victory for the Church.