Praying the solemn rosary during the Christmas Games at Sacred Heart Apostolic School.

From December 31 to January 4, 103 boys and 17 fathers from 14 states visited Sacred Heart Apostolic School in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, for the annual “Christmas Games,” an event combining spiritual enrichment with fun activities and Christmas celebrations. Visitors can explore whether they might be interested in attending the school in the future. 

Apostolic schools in the Catholic Church are specially designed to educate boys who believe they may have a vocation to be a missionary priest. The Legionaries of Christ operate many such schools throughout the world. Along with Sacred Heart in Indiana, the Legionaries also operate apostolic schools in Center Harbor, N.H., and Coflax, Calif., along with a French-speaking one in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada.

This year’s visitors to the Indiana school competed against one another in sports and other contests on teams named after Legionary apostolic schools throughout the world. They visited the Warren Dunes National Park where they raced up sand dunes and shook off the chill with a winter cookout. Activities on the school campus included spiritual talks, sports in the school gym, and information sessions in which current Sacred Heart students answered questions from the visitors and their fathers. They also celebrated traditional Spanish Christmas posadas and gathered around an evening bonfire.

Many visitors expressed their interest in returning for Sacred Heart’s summer program, during which potential students spend the month of August finding out what the school is like and evaluating whether they want to attend as students.

Sacred Heart Apostolic School is in

	Basketball in motion during the Christmas Games at Sacred Heart Apostolic School.

its second year of operation on a campus of more than 50 acres. It currently has students in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades and will add a grade each year until it has grades 7-12. The main building, modeled after a monastery on the outskirts of Rome, was built in 1933 as a Holy Cross novitiate. When the Holy Cross brothers turned it into a boarding high school in 1968, they added a classroom building with gymnasium. The Holy Cross closed the boarding school, Le Mans Academy, in 2002.

The visitors for this year’s Christmas program at Sacred Heart came from Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Louisiana, Pensylvania, Georgia, and Michigan. 

Immaculate Conception Apostolic School in Colfax, Calif., also hosted Christmas Games with 24 boys and four fathers visiting from the Sacramento and Napa. The California event featured a posada on campus and a ski trip to nearby Lake Tahoe.