Annual Bishop's Appeal

Once a year, Bishop Shelton J. Fabre makes a direct plea to the people of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux to support certain diocesan ministries through their prayers and financial contributions to the Annual Bishop’s Appeal (ABA).

One of the ministries supported by the 2021 Appeal is seminarian education. Bishop Fabre says he hopes the Appeal will remind everyone to pray that more young men will hear the call to serve the Lord as diocesan priests, and additionally that those who are able will consider making a financial gift to support the education of our seminarians.

“The ABA directly impacts the formation of our seminarians because it provides us with some of the funds that are necessary to educate our seminarians,” says Bishop Fabre, who adds that it costs the diocese around $45,000 a year for each of four to eight years to educate a young man who desires to be a diocesan priest.

Bishop Fabre says that seminaries were established so that those men who were being prepared to be ordained as deacons and eventually as priests would receive the necessary formation to serve the Lord as a priest, if that is their calling. He goes on to explain that there are four pillars of that formation.

The first pillar is intellectual formation where they are being educated in Scripture studies, church teachings, church history, and things such as that.

The second pillar is spiritual formation where they learn to answer questions such as: What does it mean to live my life as a man of prayer? What does it mean to have my relationship with Jesus Christ as the focus of my life? What does it mean to live as a celibate?

The third pillar is pastoral formation where they examine questions like: What does it mean to be a minister for the Lord? What does it mean to minister as a priest? How do I responsibly do that? How do I care for those in my pastoral charge?

The fourth pillar is human formation where they explore questions such as: How do I face those aspects of my life that are very human. How do I interact with groups of people? What does it mean to live your life as a human being and to do that as a priest?

“The formation of our seminarians is very important to me as a bishop because I want priests that are joy-filled, competent, holy, and who are able to meet the spiritual and pastoral needs of their people, and the seminary is the foundation for acquiring priests with those qualities,” says Bishop Fabre.

Seminarian Ryan Thibodaux, who is currently in his third year of formation at St. Joseph Seminary College in St. Benedict, says he is looking forward to being a priest for the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux.

Thibodaux is a native of Larose and a parishioner of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Larose. He attended Holy Rosary Catholic School in Larose and South Lafourche High School in Galliano. He also studied at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux for one year.

“I grew up in a small town where everybody knows everybody else. My whole family lived here, my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. It was nice to see everyone on a regular basis. My family brought us to church a lot. I spent a lot of my childhood at my home parish of Holy Rosary; we were a part of the church community,” says Thibodaux. “Family and church – that’s Larose! It made me feel like I belonged to something. I belonged to my family and I also belonged to my church family. Growing up I just related that to God and being loved by God.”

Thibodaux remembers following his parents’ lead when it came to his Catholic faith.

“I remember going to adoration with my mom. It was just silence and I really didn’t know how to pray because I was little, so I would just do what she did,” says the seminarian. “I also remember following my dad’s lead. During Lent, we would pray the rosary together as a family with my dad leading us. Following his lead was very inspiring to me. I thought if he was praying, then we should also pray … because he was the leader of the household.”

Thibodaux says that moments like that with his mom, dad, and his friends just made him go deeper into his relationship with God. He felt like if he had all of those people looking at him and seeing Christ in him, then he needed to be more like Christ.

“I want to be a priest because God gave his life for me and he has given everything to me, so I feel like it’s only fair for me to give everything back to him. I feel like he has constantly shown me that this is the way he wants me to give my life to him,” says Thibodaux.

And, just like God has given everything to him, says the seminarian, the diocese has given so much to him and he wants to give back by serving its people.

“All of my experiences of what the priesthood is have been shown to me in my community, so I want to give back to them because they’ve helped me to be the man I am today,” says Thibodaux. “So I’m saying ‘yes’ to God about who he wants me to be and where he wants me to be.”

Seminarian Davis Ahimbisibwe is a third year theology student at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. He is a native of Kabale in southwestern Uganda who has three sisters. He says he is very close to his family and that his parents worked very hard and made great sacrifices for him.
Ahimbisibwe says he went to the best Catholic schools in Uganda. He attended St. Paul’s Seminary for high school. “I loved being at the seminary. The spiritual life helped me encounter God more. I went to the seminary for high school because my mother wanted that for me. As a teenager I was afraid of that because it was a stricter life, but it is something I will forever be grateful for. It gave me the seed that would blossom later.”

He explains that in his first year of high school he wanted to be a priest. Then he realized he was really good in biology, chemistry and physics, so he thought he would make a good doctor … a doctor who loved and served God. He left the seminary and went to a Catholic university for two years, and then to medical school for five years. He graduated as a general practitioner, did a one-year internship at his hometown hospital and worked two years in a health center that was also in his hometown.

“God created medical doctors to restore the physical health of man and priests to restore their spiritual health,” says Ahimbisibwe. “I really loved treating my patients. Being a doctor, I got to be a witness of the miracles God does; I saw the power of God every day. I treated my patients as a whole person, the physical and the spiritual. They would talk to me about their spiritual needs and that was one of the things I loved, as well, because sometimes I was able to see their spiritual faith enlightened.”

Over the course of time, Ahimbisibwe began to realize he had kind of just “told” God he wanted to be a doctor. He eventually came to understand that whatever his vocation would be was a gift from God that he had to accept with love and generosity. “I had to converse with God and see how he wanted me to serve him best,” he says. “I had to ask him ‘what do you want me to do for you? I want to know you, serve you and love you all my life … how are you inviting me to do that?’ And that lead me to serving God through the priesthood.”

Ahimbisibwe explains that as a medical doctor, treating people is a temporal reality. A medical doctor treats a body; but finally there is a point where the body can no longer be treated, and as a doctor you’re helpless at that point. “So I started focusing on what is necessary … an eternal reality. Spiritual health is always superior to physical health, so I began to think what if I treated the spiritual and helped this person to have life for eternity. And through that I began to see that medicine is good and medical doctors do a lot of good work that is to be commended, but priests, as spiritual doctors, deal with the eternal. Priesthood prepares someone for a life without end and because of that it is a higher calling.”

Ahimbisibwe says there are three things that helped the seeds of his vocation grow: His family, prayer before the Eucharist, and his relationship with Mary. He is most looking forward to being a priest so that he can make God known and loved through the Scriptures and through the sacraments.

Those who wish to contribute to the 2021Annual Bishop’s Appeal can choose to make a one-time gift or use the pledge system in which they can make monthly or quarterly contributions. Donations can also be made on-line by visiting www.htdiocese.org/bishopsappeal. For more information about the Annual Bishop’s Appeal, call (985)850-3122.