As you may have seen from the posters at your parish or your children’s school, this is National Catholic Schools Week. We have a few articles that can help shed some light on Catholic education today.

Edward Pentin’s front-page story about Pope Benedict XVI’s invitation to La Sapienza University in Rome, and the controversy that followed when protesters vowed to drown him out, isn’t just a cautionary tale about Catholic identity. It’s also a story of hope.

The photo we chose to illustrate it depicts the outpouring of support Sapienza students showed the Holy Father at St. Peter’s Basilica when they attended his Sunday Angelus and cheered their encouragement.

On page two, Joseph Pronechen looks at the inspiring story of St. Augustine’s High School in New Orleans. The road back from the devastation of the Katrina hurricane has been a long one, but the school and its famous marching band have at last recovered.

On the page previous to this one, Melinda Selmys begins another of her excellent series. This time, she’s writing about education, and nicely sums up the deeper fundamentals of education.

Finally, on our education page, Joan Frawley Desmond and Mary Ann Sullivan focus on higher education. Desmond writes about a new Catholic college guide, and Sullivan reports on the new political studies center at Thomas More College in Merrimack, N.H.

God bless!