OLEAN, N.Y. — Robert Paque is a gifted and community-minded young man.

He graduated as Archbishop Walsh Academy’s salutatorian this year with loads of scholarships to George Mason University. He is one of a select few high-schoolers in the country to have contributed to a published, peer-reviewed collegiate study.

He was one of four Big 30 Academic Scholarship winners for 2014. He works as a counselor at YMCA Camp Onyahsa on Chautauqua Lake. He ran a tutoring program for elementary students at Southern Tier Catholic School. The little ones affectionately dubbed it “Robert Care.”

And after all he accomplished, Paque gave his salutatorian speech at graduation before classmates, parents and a clergy member and tearfully thanked Walsh administrators for not expelling him — for being openly gay.

Walsh’s stance?

Board president Beth Powers later said, “It was never even under consideration.”

But as Paque, now 18, struggled with accepting his own sexual orientation and taking baby steps to make it public — all the while hearing news of religious schools elsewhere booting out gays — he feared his days were numbered.

“I would like follow Facebook pages about gay pride and things like that,” Paque said six days after graduation.

“There would just be articles posted about mostly schools in the South — and I don’t want to sound stereotypical, but they were mostly schools in the South — saying that religious schools were expelling their gay students.”

The day that haunted him never arrived. Conversely, Archbishop Walsh Academy administrators were staunchly supportive, he said.

“It was just kind of like, ‘OK, we have a gay student in our school,’” Paque said. “Nothing changed. I’m still a student at the school. I didn’t act any different. I didn’t do my school work any different. It was just another fact, and it didn’t really change anything.”

The Walsh board president has long touted Paque’s merits. In conversations over the last two years, Powers often pointed to his work — from grades to a series of “love poems” written entirely in mathematical equations — as exemplary.

“Robert is a wonderful person. He is respected by everybody in the school, young and old, teachers, faculty and the kids,” Powers said. “He is hard working. He is respectful. He’s honest. He’s got a really upbeat perspective on life.

“From the board perspective … this issue never came up. Nobody expressed any concerns about him being in the school. We think he’s a wonderful person, and it was never a point of discussion to have him leave the school.”

Others elsewhere haven’t been so fortunate.

According to national news media reports, some Catholic dioceses have taken a strong stance against homosexuality in their private schools.

Indeed, Paque cited a Catholic school in the Bronx that expelled 17-year-old Amanda Acevedo for being a lesbian in September 2013. But students haven’t been the only ones affected. Openly gay teachers and administrators have also been ousted, as seen at a Seattle-area Catholic school where a vice principal reportedly was fired for refusing to divorce his husband.

In another instance in 2010, a Catholic school near Boulder, Colo., expelled a preschooler — because she has lesbian parents.

But Powers pointed out a statement by Pope Francis, which Time magazine has called “the five most famous words of his papacy so far.”

“Who am I to judge?” the pope offered when pressed on gays last July. Despite the concession, Pope Francis and Catholic doctrine haven’t budged from viewing homosexuality as a sin and condemning gay marriage.

Still, especially in recent years which have seen a stronger push for gay equality, many in the Catholic hierarchy have strategically tip-toed around the subject.

Paque fully came out as a junior. By eighth grade, he explained, he admitted to his close circle of friends he was bisexual.

That was just “a stepping stone,” he said. 

He continued dating girls “to fit in,” he said. “It was weird and none of my relationships lasted longer than a month. There was always something just missing.”

Still, he stayed “pretty closeted” for several more years. In coming out, he said his parents, Jeffrey and Sara of Allegany, and other family members were supportive.

“I just didn’t want to hide anymore,” Paque said. “It’s exhausting, hiding from things.”

Shortly after that admission, however, his fears came to life in the form of a visiting priest in February 2013, he said. 

Powers said the priest — she didn’t name him, but noted he pastors a Bradford Catholic schism church that is not recognized by the Vatican — came to a Walsh classroom at the request of a former faculty member who has since been dismissed.

“He was kind of just going around the room … and he looked at me and said, ‘You’re the one.’ So, like, apparently there was an intent for him to specifically talk to me when she was bringing him in,” Paque said. “He let me know with very strong words that he doesn’t agree with my lifestyle, and that when I die there’s going to be a special place for me to go to, and that I need to change my behavior or else I’m not going to be respected and I’m not going to be loved by people.”

Paque cried.

But he noted principal Mykal Karl, shortly after hearing of the incident, brought him to her office to again express support and console him.

“He was invited into a Spanish class, not a religious class, by a teacher who was not responsible for the religious program at the school,” Powers explained. “That was an unauthorized visit, inappropriate and outside the subject-matter responsibility the teacher had. The school took the appropriate action to deal with that.”

Paque added, “That was the first time I really knew that I was OK at Walsh and I was fine to be who I was.”

He concluded he looks forward to returning for Archbishop Walsh reunions years from now — perhaps with a husband in tow.

“Walsh has done nothing but support. They could easily have not, but they chose to support me,” Paque said. “They’ve allowed me to grow as a person how I see fit for myself without trying to sway me any way. They’ve accepted me in their school community, and I’ll be forever thankful for that.”