A joyous African celebration filled St. Charles Lwanga parish yesterday as boys drummed and girls danced to welcome Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, who came from the Vatican to visit schools supported by the Extra Mile Foundation of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Preschooler Ariana Murrell, 4, greets Cardinal Francis Arinze during his visit yesterday to Holy Rosary School in Homewood. Behind him are acting Pittsburgh Bishop Paul Bradley and school Principal Gwendolyn Young. Click photo for larger image. Listen in The Vatican's Cardinal Francis Arinze celebrates Mass and visits Holy Rosary School in Homewood: A student troupe of African drummers and dancers welcomes the cardinal. Cardinal Arinze comments on Pittsburgh's Extra Miles schools.

Four Extra Mile schools serve a black, non-Catholic student body in impoverished neighborhoods. The foundation, supported by many non-Catholics, subsidizes about 60 percent of operating costs, keeping tuition low.

At Mass in St. Charles in Homewood, the cardinal spoke beneath an image of Jesus as a crucified African.

"The school is a community of love, of caring, of training. The school ... wants to build you up in character so you will be a joy to your family, so that society rejoices because of you," he told about 400 students from Holy Rosary School in Homewood, St. Agnes in Oakland, St. Benedict the Moor in the Hill District and St. James in Wilkinsburg.

In an interview, he said he had never seen Catholic schools with such broad support.

"An organization to help the children who are disadvantaged from the financial point of view, an organization that is diocesan and that has behind it not just Catholics but Episcopalians and other Christians and Jews who are convinced of this good effort and who give and who serve on the committee -- I have not seen such before. This is good news," he said.

He was joined at Mass by Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., who had invited him here prior to his own recent transfer from Pittsburgh to the nation's capital. He created the Extra Mile Foundation in 1988, to make sure the church continued to serve poor children in neighborhoods Catholics had largely moved out of.

Cardinal Arinze is one of the most powerful men at the Vatican. He runs the liturgy office, but worked in Catholic schools as a young priest and bishop in Nigeria.

"Since so many of the students are African-American, and Cardinal Arinze is from Nigeria, I thought they might appreciate seeing a role model," Archbishop Wuerl said.

That was important to Samara McGraw, 10, a sixth-grader at Holy Rosary.

"He represents us. He shows what we can do," she said.

At Holy Rosary, the cardinal visited a preschool and kindergarten class, where children answered questions about the days of the week.

Justyn Nathan, the preschool teacher, was proud of his charges.

"It makes me feel like they know we've done a great job with these children, like those beyond this school see how well they learn and follow directions -- some even better than the older kids," he said.

At. St. Benedict the Moor, a seventh-grade class asked how he became a cardinal, and what languages he spoke. He replied that his mother tongue was Ibo, but that he had learned English as a child, and his work requires him to speak Italian, French, German and Spanish. He described the many years of college and seminary required to become a priest.

"Without what you are doing now, a person cannot become a cardinal," he said.