News - December 2017 RSS Feed

As we look to a weekend with two Mass obligations, read on for tips on taking your family to Mass. The most important thing to keep in mind - you are not alone and your family is a witness of God's love!

Former WWL-TV news director, editorialist and assistant general manager Phil Johnson, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 80, was an icon among New Orleans television journalists. When the Jesuits who owned WWL said they wanted the station to “stand” for something, Johnson began writing brief daily editorials in 1962 to close out the news report each day. Johnson retired in 1999, but WWL has continued to air his Christmas Eve editorial every year. Johnson was a close friend and benefactor of School Sister of Notre Dame Lillian McCormack, who founded St. Michael’s Special School.

This Sunday was Gaudete Sunday – or, as my five year old calls it, “Pink Candle Sunday” (which is better than the six year old’s comment, which was a shocked observation that “Father is wearing a pink dress – like a girl!”). I’d be more discouraged by the assessment were it not for the fact that church is the only place the kids see advent candles, as Casa de Donaldson has none this year...

On Halloween – the day that literally means “the eve of All Saints” – students at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School in Kenner had the privilege to encounter one of the most beloved saints of their time: St. John Paul II, who served as pope from 1978 to 2005.

Bishop Dominic Mai Luong, the first bishop of Vietnamese descent in the United States and the founding father of the Vietnamese Catholic community in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, died Dec. 6 in Orange, California, where he had served as auxiliary bishop since 2003.

Speaking at Father Cazenavette’s Funeral Mass Dec. 7 at St. Rita Church in Harahan, Father Bruno said his friend since their days studying for the priesthood at Notre Dame Seminary “often lamented, that we, even the church, too often focused on us and left God out of the equation. And his lament … was that we didn’t put enough emphasis on God, who is everything to us if we believe in the creed. He should dictate our whole lives and our schedules.”

Inside the parish hall of St. Gabriel the Archangel Church in New Orleans, the personal stories flowed as freely as the tears. One by one, descendants of the 272 enslaved men, women and children sold as a group in 1838 to a Louisiana plantation by the Jesuits who ran Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., partially to relieve the school’s debts, described what it was like upon learning, through the meticulous records kept and maintained for nearly 200 years by the Society of Jesus, their hidden and bitter family story.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond delivered the following address Dec. 6 to more than 350 people at the 75th annual Christmas luncheon of the Council of Catholic School Cooperative Clubs:

Christopher West brought his “project of the heart” to Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Mandeville on Dec. 2, and almost 250 people were there to learn more about how to embrace and live God’s divine plan for man and woman. West, bestselling author, teacher, Theology of the Body expert, and founder of the Cor Project (“cor” is Latin for heart), was invited to speak on “Living the Joy of Love” by the Marriage and Family Life ministry at Our Lady of the Lake.

As the year draws to a close, we have much for which to be thankful as our local church has followed the Holy Spirit to “Encounter Jesus and Witness with Joy,” which is the synod’s theme.

El Arzobispo Gregory Aymond pronunció el siguiente discurso el 6 de diciembre a más de 350 personas, en la celebración anual del 75 almuerzo de Navidad del Consejo de Clubes Cooperativos de la Escuela Católica:

The late Maedell Hoover Braud, who worked at Loyola University New Orleans for more than 30 years as an administrative assistant in the College of Arts and Sciences, has left a $10 million legacy gift to the university that will be used to provide scholarships for undergraduates and law students.

Funds from the annual collection help aging sisters, brothers and rriests in Religious Orders