The 30-year-old Archdiocesan Spirituality Center may have moved to larger quarters in Metairie on the campus of the former St. Lawrence the Martyr parish (off Roosevelt Boulevard behind Home Depot), but its mission is unchanged.

New Orleans’ Sicilian community is known for its devotion to St. Joseph by preparing elaborate altars each year on or near his feast day, March 19. While the majority are in church parishes or the homes of Catholics of Sicilian heritage, several high schools also have altars.

Campers who like to stay cool in the summer with a dip in the swimming pool will really enjoy St. Louis King of France’s Camp Crusader 2012. The school offers an on-site swimming pool with lifeguards in which campers can relax and beat the heat day after day.

St. Martin’s Episcopal School calls it the “Summer Experience,” and with good reason. The school’s 18-acre campus is utilized in some fashion for the variety of summer activities, and campers get the personal attention for which the school has been noted.

St. Mary’s Dominican High School has summer fun covered for girls of all ages. Dominican offers four summer programs to meet the specific interests of just about any camper. The youngest campers – girls who have completed first through fourth grades – can participate in Jumpin’ For Joy, which offers activities such as arts and crafts, cheerleading, games, “Bibleosity,” word games, music and dance.

Our Lady of Divine Providence Summer Camp provides plenty of action for even the most energetic young campers. And for parents, the camp is extremely affordable. The camp runs weekly from June 4-July 13, and the cost of a six-week session is $620 per camper with a multi-child discount.

Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras, which brings together young musicians from around the New Orleans area, will host its third annual Summer Orchestras Program on Tuesday evenings, June 19-July 24, at Loyola University New Orleans.

The old saying, “There’s something for everyone,” has never been more appropriate than in describing the wide range of summer camp offerings at Mount Carmel Academy. Mount Carmel offers an array of specialized activities for girls from second through ninth grades, mostly broken down into one-week sessions so that campers can test out their preferences with ease.

Josephite Father Matthew J. O’Rourke, the founding principal of St. Augustine High School in 1951 and the former superior general of the Josephites, died March 9 at St. Joseph Manor in Baltimore following a long illness.

Father Peter O’Grady, the former pastor of St. Agnes Parish in Jefferson who died March 1, was a “larger than life priest” who left England and his Irish family and found a home in New Orleans, dedicating his life to serving his parishioners, his brother said at his funeral Mass March 9 at St. Agnes.

New Orleans Saints assistant coaches Terry Malone and Joe Lombardi came to St. Rita Church in New Orleans March 10 to talk to a Morning of Men’s Spirituality about how they try to weave their Catholic faith into their lives, marriages and jobs, but first, they had to address the “elephant” in the church.

Mark Hart decided to stop playing “word games with God” in his early 20s, after surviving an emergency airplane landing in the middle of New Mexico. Grateful that the pilot had successfully maneuvered his ailing craft onto a narrow airstrip, Hart vowed to take the first possible opportunity to go to confession and to base his examination of conscience on a prayer he had said as his airplane was pitching through the sky: “Lord God, I’m sorry for the man that I have been since I’ve known you.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – In a strongly worded letter to his fellow bishops, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York charged that White House officials failed to consider the U.S. bishops’ concerns that the federal mandate governing employer coverage of contraception and sterilization under the health care law violated religious freedom principles.

It didn’t take long for Josephite Father Anthony Bozeman, pastor of St. Raymond-St. Leo the Great Church, seminarian Daniel Green and a host of choirs, the X-Factor Drumline and the St. Katharine Drexel dance troupes to rouse more than 400 people to their feet to sing in praise of God at the fifth annual Youth and Young Adult Revival March 4 at St. Gabriel the Archangel Church.

Click here for the image gallery Catholic Women in Action, a committee of the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, will continue its Lenten series for women, “Deepening My Love for the Eucharist,” with one final session March 13, featuring talks by Father Joseph Krafft, Jill Cabes, Tammy O’Brien and Marianite Sister Judy Gomila at St. Francis Xavier Church in Metairie.

The Academy of the Sacred Heart’s Environmental Club collaborates with the nonprofit environmental group Green Light New Orleans to help residents save money on electricity bills while reducing carbon emissions in the environment.

Catholic Women in Action, a committee of the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, will continue its Lenten series for women, “Deepening My Love for the Eucharist,” with one final session March 13, featuring talks by Father Joseph Krafft, Jill Cabes, Tammy O’Brien and Marianite Sister Judy Gomila at St. Francis Xavier Church in Metairie.

Click here for the image gallery Rosary making may not seem that uncommon in the Catholic community. But imagine someone making more than 10,000 of them, with the majority going to Catholic missions worldwide?

Whenever Joyce O’Brien makes fudge, she harks back to a “kitchen disaster” from her childhood. After O’Brien had prepared “the best fudge in the world” and set the platter temporarily in the sink, her uncle washed his hands in that sink, accidentally “watering” his niece’s sugary confections.

Madeline Bridgewater, 67 Who is she? Retired last month after 20 years as the front-desk receptionist at Wynhoven Health Care Center in Marerro. Known to patients and co-workers as “Mamma Maddie,” the Vacherie-born Bridgewater has been a parishioner of St. Joseph the Worker in Marrero for 65 years.