Bishop's Appeal

The Bishop's Appeal supports the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux through Seminarian Education, Retired Priests Assistance, Office of Catholic Schools, Formation Ministries (Ethnic Ministries and Youth and Adult Formation), and Collegiate Campus Ministry. Your gift and prayers go a long way through the Bishop's Appeal by changing and forming the future of our diocese through each of these ministries. 

Seminarian Education - Your generous gifts provide essential funding each year to cover the annual costs of educating our seminarians in our diocese. Your gifts provide resources for our diocese to:

• Educate our 6 seminarians 
• Cover the annual average cost of $45,000 to educate each seminarian
• Provide for their education, room, board, and sometimes healthcare needs.
• Educate and provide formation to our 2 men within the House of Formation. 

Retired Priests - Your generous gifts and prayers provide necessary and essential health care, long-term care, and supplemental income. Once a priest retires, a church parish no longer supports his income; therefore, the priest is supported and funded through the diocesan priest retirement. Your gift provides the essential support such as:

• Support our beloved 16 retired priests of our diocese with supplemental retirement income
• Funds supplemental health insurance
• Fund long-term care needs
• Other required services for them to continue to live in our diocese 

Office of Catholic Schools - Your gifts and prayers give necessary resources to work with and support our teachers, staff, and administration at all 10 Catholic schools. Our Office of Catholic Schools provides educational opportunities for our staff to grow spiritually and academically, ensuring our students have well-formed teachers with innovative curricula at their fingertips. As the largest evangelization ministry of our diocese, the Office of Catholic Schools supports our school and students by:

• Serving our 10 Catholic schools with over 4,800 students being the largest ministry of our diocese
• Professional development to our 500 teachers through teacher convocations and other opportunities
• Access to a Curriculum Specialist and growth within the classroom
• Consultative support for administration and development
• Evaluation of classroom performance and COGNIA accreditation tools
• Certification tracking for all teachers
• Academic testing and performance review

Formation Ministries - Celebrating and supporting the many ethnicities across our diocese is incredibly important to our culture and heritage. The diocese has three ethnic ministry offices: Hispanic Ministry, African American Ministry, and Native American Ministry. We also support our Office of Parish Support through Youth and Adult Formation initiatives. These offices evangelize through:

• Our youth and adult formation continue to train lay leaders to serve our parishes better and provide spiritual guidance. 
• Our ethnic ministries include African American, Native American, Vietnamese, and Hispanic Ministries. Each is unique to our diocese and provides education with culture and spiritually serves a large population within our community. 

Collegiate Ministry - The diocese provides essential funding to our diocesan Collegiate Campus Ministry Program (Colonel Catholics) through St. Thomas Aquinas on the campus of Nicholls State University. While most church parishes have a thriving youth formation program for elementary and high school students, St. Thomas is unique in being the church parish for our local state university. Therefore, as our primary Collegiate Campus Ministry Program, our diocese funds a substantial component of your Catholic Campus Ministry.

• Minister to over 500 young adult college students at St. Thomas Aquinas on the campus of Nicholls State University
• Evangelize young adults to strengthen their relationship with Christ
• Providing for retreats and formational and service activities to college students within our diocese