WASHINGTON – The number of Americans living in poverty went down slightly last year, according to the Census Bureau’s annual report, but the number of uninsured Americans rose a bit.Read More

ALBANY, N.Y. - In 1863, a joint committee of Congress held a hearing to assay how the Civil War was proceeding after two years of combat. A number of experts were summoned to testify, including General Benjamin F. Butler.Read More

VATICAN CITY – For the first time in a decade, summer tourists could make their way down steep stone steps deep into the dark, dank interior of a papal fortress and crawl into prison cells that housed countless common criminals as well as Rome’s errant elite. The 1,900-year-old Castel Sant’Angelo, which stands near the Tiber...Read More

WASHINGTON – Church giving is beginning to rebound from challenges posed by the recession, according to a new survey involving mostly Protestant churches.Read More

High school students don’t have to be overwhelmed when picking a college as long as they put college planning on their agenda each year leading up to graduation, according to Monica Moody Moore, vice president for enrollment management at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Baltimore. “You don’t want to use a singular source...Read More

As we end this month of celebrating women’s history, I remember a story once shared here in Baltimore at St. Mary’s Seminary and University by Benedictine Father Cyprian Davis, a noted historian and teacher.Read More

Asked what he wants to be when he grows up, 11-year-old Diallo Bratcher didn’t pause for a moment before he replied with the most serious expression he could produce. “A lawyer,” he answered. Why? “Because I talk a lot,” Diallo said, and this time his almost ever-present, infectious grin returned. Diallo, his 10-year-old brother and...Read More

PEORIA, Ill. – Father John J. Dietzen, the foremost question-and-answer columnist in the Catholic press for 35 years, died March 27 at OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria. He was 83.Read More