The two women were discussing what Saint Vincent Academy in Newark meant to them, and both were at a loss for words.

" I can't really explain it," said Samantha Joseph, as tears came to her eyes.

"I came in very insecure, very timid. But I learned we are all special. God doesn't make junk.

"I found my voice here ... ," she continued, then stopped as the tears breached her eyelids and spilled onto her cheek.

"Now you got me going," said Jo Ann Caporaso, who earlier said Saint Vincent was "her life."

"Now I'm getting choked up," she said.

They reached out and touched hands, a gesture of shared experience, though five decades apart, and a sisterhood that is unconstrained by age, race or background.

Samantha Joseph is a senior at Saint Vincent and the student forum president. She is an African-American teenager.

Jo Ann Caporaso is an Italian-American from the Newark's North Ward, who went "kicking and screaming" into the all-girls Catholic school in 1961 and never left. She coached the girls basketball team as an undergraduate at Seton Hall and was hired as a teacher out of college.

"I had a job offer at a public school in Nutley," Caporaso said, "but I chose to work here. That was a school. This is a learning community. We have a philosophy. We have a mission."

Education. Spiritual development. Service to the community.

"The experience of giving service feeds the commitment to service," said Sr. June Favata, who heads the school. "We teach them to love themselves and love one another, that they are sisters in that journey of self-discovery."

The result seems to be that once girls walk through the doors of SVA, it gets in their blood. They become enveloped and nurtured in an environment of safety and empowerment.

"We don't allow them to see themselves as victims," Favata said, a nun in the Sisters of Charity, which founded the school.. "We ask them to find the strengths they have, and the talents given to them by God to share and make the world a better place."

MORE: Recent Mark Di Ionno columns

Saint Vincent Academy's all-male counterpart in Newark is St. Benedict's Prep, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.

It has a long list of prestigious alumni, and a national reputation as an educational institution that didn't buckle and fold under the weight of a changing city but adapted and thrived while still enforcing its standards.

Fr. Ed Leahy, the headmaster, has been on "60 Minutes" and countless other programs and forums, despite his efforts to deflect attention and make St. Benedict's success about the kids.

But less than a mile away on West Market Street, SVA can make the same claims. And it, too, will be celebrating its 150th anniversary in the next academic year. It's just that nobody seems to know outside of the SVA sisterhood.

"What can you say?" Favata said with a pragmatic shrug. "In many respects, it's still a man's world."

True enough. For the better part of its existence, SVA had a college prep program and a business school, to teach girls secretarial and bookkeeping skills - women's work in the men's corporate world.

Favata, who has been there 48 years, changed that in the 1970s.

"We made sure the business school students were college eligible," she said. "In the early '80s, the business school was phased out."

The world had changed, and again, SVA changed with it.

The school was opened in 1869, on a hill on West Market Street overlooking the downtown, across the street from the very monastic looking Priory, which is now a jazz club.

It began as a coed elementary school and a boarding school for young women.

"It was a 'finishing school' for people of means," Favata said.

Over the years, it offered "industrial arts" and "classical education" for young women, Favata said.

In 1967, the elementary school closed.

The city was changing and SVA survived, and embraced, the change. Today, there are 248 students who pay $5,400 in tuition. The cost of educating each girl is more than double that, but the cost is covered by fundraising.

"This school has always reflected the face of the city," Caporaso said.

Whether the girls were German, Irish, Italian, African-American or Hispanic, the school preached that the individual student was "the architect of their learning," Favata said.

"When you set the bar high, people rise to it," she said.

Here is a small example of SVA learning. The freshman class read "I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust," by Livia Bitton-Jackson, who now lives in Israel.

In researching her life, the students learned she had family in America. A few Instagram clicks later, they found her granddaughter, who led them to her daughter in West Orange. In less than a week, 60 girls gathered in an assembly room and made a phone connection with the 87-year-old author.

"You would have thought it was Beyonce on the phone," said Toni Piccolo, their teacher.

With awe and politeness beyond their years, the girls asked questions, all proceeded by saying, "It is such an honor to talk to you."

Bitton-Jackson's message echoes Favata's words about the girls not being allowed to see themselves as victims.

"Never complain about small things," Bitton-Jackson told them. "Learn tolerance. We suffered only because we were Jews. We didn't do anything wrong. Don't judge by religion or color."

On March 1, SVA held a women's leadership forum, putting female corporation presidents, media personalities, bankers and attorneys in front of their girls. While none was an SVA graduate, the school could have easily filled the panels with alumni.

Tai Beauchamp, a contributor to "Today," "The View" and "Wendy Williams," is a graduate. So is aerospace engineer Maria Garzon. Essex County Chief of Detectives Quovella Spruill graduated in 1988. The list goes on in every field: education, health care, technology, law, government, service.

Samantha Joseph is a senior. Part of her tears, she said, "is that it's (high school) coming to an end. It went by fast, but I am a completely different person."

Caporaso said SVA had the same effect on her.

"When I came here, I thought I was the center of the universe," she said. "But it opened up the world to me. I grew spiritually. I gained empathy. We learn here that the world is much bigger, and we can have a role in making it better."

The bar is high, and the girls reach for it.

"What we do best is bring hope," Favata said. "We continue to inspire hope."

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.