At exactly 12:37 p.m. on Jan. 6, Rockhurst principal Father Vincent Giacabazi, SJ informed students that they had a snow day. The start of second semester would be delayed 24 hours by a winter storm. At 3:12 p.m., the students found out that their principal would be trading frigid winters for sunny Florida at school year’s end. Giacabazi has been appointed the next president of Jesuit High School in Tampa, Fla., announced Rockhurst president David Laughlin.
Giacabazi’s departure will conclude a decade of work at Rockhurst, including the last six years as principal. Earlier in his tenure, Giacabazi served as a teacher and chair of the theology department. He will continue to perform his duties as principal until the end of the academic year.
Giacabazi’s move has been months in the making, but his connections to the Sunshine State run back much further. He has sat as the chair of the academic affairs committee at Jesuit Tampa for the last eight years.
“I’ve probably been to 35 or 40 meetings in Tampa over the last eight years,” Giacabazi said. “So, I had a sense that eventually that president, Father Richard Hermes, his time would come to an end [as president].”
Hermes announced his departure from the school in Sept. 2024. Giacabazi, with the blessing of provincial superior Father Thomas Greene, SJ, applied for the job two months later.
Another two months and a flip of the calendar, Giacabazi has accepted the position, and with it a bevy of new responsibilities.
“It will be my responsibility, my duty, to make sure that we have a balanced budget, to make sure that we’re fundraising properly and responsibly, to care for the students, certainly, to care for my colleagues on the faculty and staff,” Giacabazi said.
This, in layman’s terms, is the job Giacabazi has been hired for. But “hiring” doesn’t quite capture how he sees his purpose. He prefers the term used in Laughlin’s announcement: “missioned.”
“When I talk about missioning,” Giacabazi said, “it means it’s a mission from Jesus Christ for me, sent out through my superiors, through my provincial superior, through the Board of Trustees there, and I really do see it as such.”
With that mindset, Giacabazi hopes to go beyond the duties entrusted to him, particularly with regards to Jesuit’s 800-plus students.
“The good folks in Tampa are pretty keen, pretty insistent that one of my primary duties is to get to know the student population, and even though that’s probably not in the job description of a president, it’s what they want and it’s what I want as well,” Giacabazi said. “I didn’t join the Society of Jesus or the Priesthood of Jesus Christ to simply have a desk job.”
The change will mark the end of the partnership between Giacabazi and Laughlin as the figureheads of Rockhurst High School, a relationship that the former described as “deep and abiding.”
Laughlin and Giacabazi first collaborated during Laughlin’s own term as Rockhurst principal in 2004. Giacabazi, then a member of the Alumni Service Corps, was not yet the Jesuit priest he is today.
“I first met Fr. Giacabazi when he was Mr. Giacabazi…I kept in touch with him over the years,” Laughlin said.
He would go on to attend Giacabazi’s ordination.
Laughlin’s return to Rockhurst as president more than a decade later coincided with the hiring cycle that landed Giacabazi in his current role. At the time, Giacabazi filled the role of interim principal, while a larger search was being conducted. According to Laughlin, many people inside the school believed the right man for the job was already in house.
“Most of the people here just said, ‘Why don’t we keep him as principal?'” Laughlin recounted. “We were fortunate to be able to do that.”
Nearly six years later, both men speak fondly of their time together.
“When you trust the person you’re working with, maybe when you don’t agree on things or you need to kind of, you know, argue it out, so to speak, it helps to have somebody you trust because you know that their motives are about the interest of the school,” Laughlin said.
Giacabazi agreed that he and Laughlin were aligned on the mission of the school.
“I just can’t think of a moment where Mr. Laughlin and I were not aligned in our thinking, not compatible in where we saw the success of the school going,” Giacabazi said.
Giacabazi and Laughlin were also aligned on what the former’s greatest success was as principal: the teachers, coaches, and staff that make Rockhurst turn.
“I have great confidence in the people that Mr. Laughlin and I have hired to be teachers and coaches,” Giacabazi said. “I think they’re…really good people who want to live in the mission of the school as best they can.”
Laughlin, along with a panel of parents, faculty, and trustees, will look to continue that hiring success in the search for Giacabazi’s successor. Giacabazi stated that he will “mercifully” not be involved in the hiring process.
“I think that’s a good thing for Rockhurst that I’m not involved in any way,” said Giacabazi.
Despite his absence from the process, Giacabazi is confident that the next person to fill his office will be the best fit for Rockhurst’s mission.
“That person will have a positive, hope-filled commitment to education, and formation of young men in the Kansas City region,” Giacabazi said. “Everything else is beneath and secondary to that.”
Prospective applicants are to apply for the position before Feb. 5.
Giacabazi’s departure will also mark a near-complete turnover of Rockhurst’s Jesuits. In addition to Giacabazi, scholastics Dr. Philip Nahlik, SJ, and Ignatius Nguyen, SJ, will conclude three-year regencies at the end of the academic year.
Laughlin has been in communication with Greene in regards to new Jesuits potentially joining the Rockhurst community in 2025. Father Carlos Esparza, SJ, who recently arrived at Rockhurst by way of St. Louis University, is one of these. Giacabazi also expressed confidence in the strength of faith formation at the Rock for years to come.
As Giacabazi’s time at Rockhurst draws to a close, his description of his own departure sounds much like the countless homilies he has delivered during his life.
“I feel like St. Paul in some ways,” Giacabazi said, “as he’s saying goodbye to his Christian friends.”
Although he will soon depart, Giacabazi wishes the best for all the members of the community he has served.
“I desperately love the students of Rockhurst High School. “I want their success, I want their flourishing just as much as their parents on their best day.”
