While elementary school students are still enjoying their summer vacations, new Catholic school principals began their first days on the job July 1, and they are anxious to move forward with their plans for the new school year that begins in mid-August in most cases.

Temperatures are beginning to soar; humidity’s up; bug spray’s in abundance — let the fun begin at Camp Ondessonk. Young people don’t mind inconvenience and a little heat because they are living the dream while they explore, hike, ride — two-wheeled or four-footed — swim, craft and more in the 983 acres of the great outdoors in the Shawnee National Forest.

When Molly Olson was growing up, going to St. Clare School in O’Fallon, learning her faith in a warm and loving family, who knew she would become caught by compassion and a determination to respond and to act for victims of human sexual trafficking, giving voice to a tragedy engulfing young people around the world and here in our midst in the Midwest?