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, and Ethnic Ministries. Your gift and prayers go a long way through the Bishop's Appeal, helping shape 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 8 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 3 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 parish no longer supports his income; therefore, he is supported by the diocesan priest retirement fund. Your gift provides the essential support, such as:

• Support our beloved 17 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 provide the resources needed to support our teachers, staff, and administration across all 10 Catholic schools. Our Office of Catholic Schools provides our staff with educational opportunities 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, which is the largest ministry of our diocese
• Professional development for 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 - Your generous gifts to our Bishop's Appeal provide essential funding each year to cover the costs of fostering with our Lord among youth and adults in our diocese. Your gifts provide resources for our diocese to:

• Our youth and adult formation continues to train lay leaders to serve our parishes better and provide spiritual guidance. 
• Serving over 500 college students through campus ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas, located on Nicholls State University, through Colonel Catholics
• Serving the community with formation and evangelization events such as Theology on Tap

Ethnic Ministries - Celebrating and supporting the many different ethnicities across our diocese is vital to our culture and heritage. The diocese has three ethnic ministry offices: Hispanic Ministry, African American Ministry, and Native American Ministry. These offices evangelize through: 

• Our ethnic ministries include African American, Native American, and Hispanic Communities. Each of these ministries is unique to our diocese, providing education with culture and spiritually serving a large population within our community