WILKES-BARRE – Exactly eighty years after King’s College celebrated its first Convocation Mass in 1946, students, administrators and alumni gathered in both thanksgiving and hope.
On Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026, an 80th Anniversary Mass for King’s College was celebrated in the Chapel of Christ the King on the Wilkes-Barre college’s campus. The Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, served as principal celebrant while Father Thomas P. Looney, C.S.C., President of King’s College, delivered the homily.
Father Looney invited the King’s community to celebrate how the college has grown from a single building and rented playing fields into a 31-acre downtown campus with a 33-acre athletic complex, more than 40 undergraduate majors, 11 graduate programs and 28 NCAA Division III athletic teams.
The student body, once all male, has also grown into a diverse community of women and men from a variety of cultural, ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds.
Yet, Father Looney emphasized that the most essential element of the last eight decades isn’t measured in buildings or programs. Instead, it is the fact that King’s has remained faithful to its founding mission as a Catholic institution committed to transforming students in both mind and heart.
“The birth of King’s College was – and our continued mission is – a condition of possibility for the transformation of the lives of the students who come to us,” Father Looney said.
More than 22,000 alumni have gone forth from King’s to serve in the fields of education, medicine, engineering, health care, business and more, while also raising families, serving their communities and caring for those most in need.
“We are small, but we are mighty and we are great. We do amazing, transformative work,” Father Looney emphasized.
During his homily, Father Looney described the founding of King’s as a “risky” collaboration between the Diocese of Scranton, the Congregation of Holy Cross and lay collaborators – a mission that required a “yes” so many decades ago and continues to require that same spirit of commitment today.
“That same Holy Spirit has drawn us together today to offer praise and thanksgiving to God for these past 80 years of King’s College. And we gather together and we pray that the same Holy Spirit will enable us to live, ever more deeply, the mission God’s loving providence has entrusted to us,” Father Looney said.
The connection between the past and the future took on a particularly meaningful form during the Mass when Father Looney presented Bishop Bambera with a relic of Saint Pius X as a gift from King’s College.
Bishop Bambera accepted the relic on behalf of Saint Pius X Seminary, which was re-established in downtown Scranton just weeks earlier.
The gift will be a tangible connection between King’s College and the Diocese of Scranton which are both committed to formation and service.