St. Scholastica Academy recently hosted one of my favorite nights of the year, the annual Father/Daughter night in the school’s gym. My dad and I go every year, and we have so much fun planning our costumes and getting ready for the event!

The word of the day for two local Catholic school girls’ basketball teams competing in the Jan. 2-4 Allstate Sugar Bowl Prep Classic was “Ouch!” Mount Carmel’s Kristen Nuss (0) and Archbishop Chapelle’s Kayle Jones, bottom photo, discovered the physical nature of basketball when taking a shot.

Let’s start the new year with some good news from Slidell. Pope John Paul II High School has been recognized with a national award by Coach and Athletic Director magazine. The archdiocesan school was named “Best in Class” in the magazine’s November-December issue.

St. Augustine’s senior running back, Leonard Fournette (5), joined Chris Markey (28) of Jesuit as the second prep player from schools in the Archdiocese of New Orleans to be named “Mister Football” by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.

Perception can turn on a dime. Or, in the world of college football, on one verbal commitment. When St. Aug running back Leonard Fournette announced on national television that he would attend LSU, Tiger fans were relieved, then excited.

Thanks, Kids’ Clarion LaPlace Thank you for your story on St. Charles Borromeo’s Children’s Rosary Club. Our three girls transferred to SCB for the 2012-13 school year, and we love it. We are so proud to be part of the SCB family and find that our children are blossoming educationally, spiritually and personally.

Christians should go out into the world to follow God but use “holy cunning” to guard against the snares of temptation, Pope Francis said. The pope made the remarks at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Jan. 6 on the feast of the Epiphany, which marks the manifestation of Jesus as savior to the world.

New Orleans Auxiliary Bishop Harold R. Perry, who died in 1991, was ordained to the priesthood 70 years ago on Jan. 6, 1944. The following is an excerpt from “Diary of an Unapologetic Roman Catholic Priest,” by Father R. Tony Ricard, published by Two Knights Publishing Co. Dear Bishop Harold Robert Perry, My Pastor, You were born in Lake Charles, La., to Frank and Josephine Perry on Oct. 9, 1916.

In order to provide pastoral care for the people of God in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Archbishop Aymond has made the following appointment: PASTOR

AMMAN, Jordan (CNS) – Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem welcomed the announcement of Pope Francis’ May visit to the Holy Land and said he hopes the pilgrimage will be a “cry for peace,” particularly for Palestinians, Israelis, Syrians and others beset by conflict.

We called him “The Hawk,” an adolescent play on “Hawkins,” his last name. “Mr.” Donald Hawkins, then a Jesuit scholastic, was about as far away from a soaring hawk as anyone might imagine. The freshman English teacher and Christian Life Community moderator at Jesuit High School, then about 25, used to joke with friends that he was  a walking emergency room.

Catholic bishops across the United States have endorsed access to health care as a basic human right. But with something as critical and far-reaching as health care, Catholic individuals and institutions and people of faith cannot be asked to compromise their deeply held religious beliefs to comply with portions of a law that violate their conscience.

Spending a few minutes in uninterrupted conversation with the Blessed Mother and her son is always time well spent. That’s what third, fourth and fifth graders at St. Charles Borromeo do on the third Friday of each month when they put academics aside for 20 minutes, gather around their campus’ shrine to Our Lady of Fatima and kneel for a rosary led by their schoolmates.

When Barbara Vilen challenged small groups of her sixth-grade religion students to devise creative ways to present the rosary, she received everything from a rosary made out of carved wooden beads to one assembled out of matchbox cars.

In a humble show of solidarity with two nations – Haiti and Nicaragua – boots, sneakers and every type of footwear in between were removed from the feet of St. Matthew the Apostle students and placed in the church sanctuary before the start of the Nov. 14 school Mass.