In 1995, as inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola lowered the makeshift, cardboard casket containing the body of fellow inmate Joseph Siegel into freshly dug ground at the prison’s Point Lookout cemetery, Siegel’s body fell through the bottom of the coffin.

In 1955, the roller skating rink on Jefferson Highway in Harahan, located where Colonial Lanes bowling alley is today, was one of those pop-up operations: a canvas tent covering a wooden oval, with plenty of music blaring from the speakers and guys like Joe Sedita performing figure eights and using centripetal force to spin a buddy in circles at shoulder height, all to make the young ladies swoon.

In the blink of an eye, the reality of the “battle” hit home with Father Beau Charbonnet, pastor of St. Angela Merici Parish in Metairie. Two young men had died of drug overdoses in quick succession, and as the spiritual shepherd of a suburban parish that might be considered economically advantaged and relatively carefree, Father Charbonnet was both puzzled and convicted.

If all politics is local – the precinct-tested adage of former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill – then the politics of immigration is the face in the mirror. In May, Martin Gutierrez, a division director for Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, will be seated with his family in the front pews of St. Louis Cathedral for a Mass during which his son Andrew, a graduate of Archbishop Rummel High School, will be ordained to the transitional diaconate, the final step before ordination to the priesthood in 2019.

Anyone who served in combat in the rice paddies of Vietnam and came home has lived two lives, one of which, understandably, is better kept in a lockbox. Deacon Bill Jarrell was raised as a Southern Baptist, but he didn’t have much of any religion as an Army helicopter pilot in 1967 after months of experiencing carnage that made it almost impossible to believe in “a loving God.”

Clarence Acosta is 94 years old. His next project is cracking the concrete that forms the base of his carport so that he can repair a 50-year-old buried sewer line that hasn’t been cooperating lately. All he needs is a little more time.

At 2,700 pounds, St. John Paul II has put on a little weight since his historic visit to New Orleans in 1987, but he returned with a Florentine flourish outside St. Louis Cathedral last Sunday, flashing his warm smile and tender gaze, silent but profound gifts to the City of New Orleans on the occasion of its 300th birthday.