Father Ronald Calkins, the moderator of the Clarion Herald and pastor of Mary Queen of Peace Parish in Mandeville, will join Msgr. Frank Giroir and Father Rodney Bourg as spiritual directors of a 12-day Clarion Herald pilgrimage to Italy Oct. 20-31.

Padre Luis Henao Presentacion del Señor Febrero 2, 2014 Lc. 2: 22-40 Maria rescata a Jesus. La Consacracion de los laicos. Esta es la primera salida de Jesús de su casa, y va al templo de Jerusalén a ser rescatado y a ser consagrado.

The 10-inch incision that tells part of Lafayette seminarian Joel Faulk’s story extends from the middle of his breastbone to just above his belly button. One of the amazing things about medical science – a footnote on the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” scale compared to transplanting a donor heart from a 32-year-old man into the body of a 39-year-old future priest – is that, with time, the high-tech glue stitches will dissolve and fade, leaving little evidence of the cardiovascular miracle, now considered almost routine, that occurred a few inches deeper.

So how cold was it in Washington, D.C., for the March for Life? It was very cold. On the day of the march, the wind chill was minus-9 degrees. I don’t think I’ve ever walked in those kind of temperatures before.

The divisions that exist among Christians are a source of pain and scandal, and damage the credibility and work of spreading the Gospel, Pope Francis said. “Christ’s name creates communion and unity, not division.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: In March 2013, the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans participated in an awareness campaign regarding Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.

St. Augustine’s outstanding running back Leonard Fournette gained admiration during his senior season by his thoughtfulness off the field more so than for his rushing and scoring with a football under his arms.

About 550 students from schools in the Archdiocese of New Orleans traveled to Washington, D.C., for the national March for Life. Archbishop Gregory Aymond joined the students in the annual march that offers a peaceful, prayerful protest to the 1973 Supreme Court decivision, Roe v. Wade, that legalized abortion in the U.S. (Click the image for larger view)

Zachary Albright has been selected as the Gatorade Louisiana Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year. This award recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the racecourse.

At the 2013 Catholic Schools Week Mass at St. Dominic Church, Archbishop Gregory Aymond told hundreds of students gathered from archdiocesan schools that Catholic schools are standards of both academic and spiritual excellence.

“Getting to heaven is like solving an equation – multiply love and compassion, subtract negativity, and add Jesus over our life equals heaven. [(LC)-N+J over X = H]” Logan Williams wrote this in her Catholicity essay submission for Algebra II at St. Charles Catholic High School.

Hundreds of students from schools across the Archdiocese of New Orleans offered volunteer service Jan. 20 at 16 different sites on the Martin Luther King Day of Service. The students here helped prepare and sort groceries at Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana.

A state-of-the-art campus for the Academy of Our Lady is rising from the ground in Marrero. Steel framing is well underway on the school gymnasium, science labs and classroom buildings, above. Salesian Sister Michelle Geiger, principal, hopes the new facility will be ready by mid-November 2014, and perhaps with an extended Christmas break, the girls could move into their new home in January 2015.

Xavier University of Louisiana has been recognized as a top college for teacher education by Online College Database. The organization’s new ranking, “Top Colleges in Louisiana Shaping the Next Generation,” honors the post-secondary institutions in the state that graduated the most education and teaching professionals in 2012.

Our Lady of Prompt Succor School in Chalmette paid special tribute Jan. 16 to two  stalwart School Sisters of Notre Dame who taught and ministered at the school for decades. At left, Sister Dorothy (Dot) Maniscalco operates the megaphone for which she became famous during 35 years at OLPS, where she served as administrative assistant and director of the reading learning center.

Especially for a lawyer, it’s not a bad last name to have, although the new U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, Kenneth Polite Jr., has given up correcting people on the other end of the telephone who insist on calling him, well, “polite.” For those who are hooked on phonics, Polite’s last name actually is pronounced “po-LEET.” The 1993 graduate of De La Salle High School is the newly installed federal prosecutor in a region notorious for public corruption, and he believes the Catholic school education he received at both Epiphany Elementary School and De La Salle High School helped form him in his faith and also will help him perform his public duties.

There were no Catholic schools in the farm town where I grew up. So, at our mission parish, the priest would travel to another town to bring religious sisters to teach catechism on Saturday mornings.

When she began teaching art at St. Francis Xavier School in 2006, Kelly Bates looked up and had an epiphany: Why not use some of the school’s acoustic ceiling tiles as canvases for original works of student art?

I am looking forward to celebrating Catholic Schools Week Jan. 26-Feb. 1. It will be a wonderful opportunity for our schools to celebrate what makes them special: Centers of academic excellence rooted in the love of Jesus.

Imagine an American Catholic religious history course on a wide range of topics – from the minimum wage to immigration to race relations to U.S. bishops’ documents – available at your fingertips, with primary source materials and a teacher’s guide as a framework for teaching the lesson.