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CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – Father Raphael Caamano, a Spaniard who was the U.S. head of the Opus Dei personal prelature from 1980 until 1988, died May 21 of cancer at his home in Chestnut Hill. He was 82. A funeral Mass was celebrated May 23 at St. Lawrence Church in Brookline. Father Caamano was buried in St. Joseph Cemetery in West Roxbury. Father Caamano was born in Ferrol, Spain, Nov. 14, 1924. While serving in the Spanish navy, he was responsible for designing ships, inspecting the construction of seagoing vessels and commanding ships in fleet exercises. He also spent time in Newcastle, England, learning construction techniques for new warships.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI gave his full support to the Italian bishops’ efforts to promote public policies aimed at helping the traditional family. Addressing the annual meeting of the Italian bishops’ conference May 24, Pope Benedict said the bishops’ pro-family initiatives were “in full agreement with the constant teaching of the Apostolic See.” The bishops have been criticized by some for “interfering” in Italian politics, and the president of the bishops’ conference, Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, has been given a police escort after receiving death threats. Pope Benedict told the bishops that while the church respects the separation of church and state “we cannot help concerning ourselves with that which is good” for the person, created in the image of God, and for society.

Always eager to engage in a new sporting activity, 36-year-old Coleman Devlin quenched his thirst for adventure when he dove into wakeboarding 10 years ago. “The versatility of what you can do wakeboarding is 100 times what you can do on skiis,” said the financial advisor for Ryan Beck & Co, who attends St. Mary Star of the Sea in Federal Hill. “You can go backwards. You can go forwards. You can do a 180 air. You can jump across the lake, you can flip.” A water sport which involves a rider being towed on a single board behind a boat, wakeboarding is a combination of water skiing, snow boarding and surfing techniques. A wakeboarder typically travels an average of 20 mph and rides the wake of a speed boat.

Monsignor Richard E. Parks was a sixth grader at the old St. Paul School in East Baltimore when a Franciscan sister asked him if he ever thought about becoming a priest. As an altar boy who served daily Mass at St. Paul, the young student had been a constant presence at his parish – helping wherever he could with church and school activities. He even visited sick and shut-in parishioners for his pastor, letting them know when a priest would be stopping by to give them Holy Communion. “When that nun said that to me, the idea stuck in my mind,” remembered Monsignor Parks, pastor of Sacred Heart of Mary in Graceland Park since 1982. “I was always hanging around the rectory. I got to know good priests. They had such dedication to their parishioners.” Forty eight years after Archbishop Francis Keough ordained him to the priesthood, Monsignor Parks is preparing to retire July 1. A farewell liturgy will be celebrated at noon on July 8 at Sacred Heart of Mary, with a reception to follow.

Summer in Maryland means long drives to the Eastern Shore with the sunroof open and the windows down. Thousands of Marylanders migrate to the beach every summer for vacation, but what kind of effect do they have on the Eastern Shore parishes? According to Bishop Michael Saltarelli, who has been bishop of the Diocese of Wilmington, Del., for almost 12 years, there has been an increase of parishioners from the Archdiocese of Baltimore and surrounding states to the Eastern Shore. The increase in beachgoers means packed churches and added Masses for many of the parishes in Ocean City, Bethany Beach and Rehoboth Beach. “When they talk about the faith being lost, you can’t tell it by the Catholics that come to the Eastern Shore,” said Bishop Saltarelli. “They are a wonderful inspiration to me and our priests.” In order to accommodate all of the vacationing Catholics, parishes in the southern and northern parts of the Eastern Shore bring in more priests to help with the added weekend Masses. In fact, one parish and its mission parish have 18 Masses during the weekends in the summer, said the bishop.

NEW YORK – Playwrights Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter needn’t worry about their names being usurped in posterity’s annals by Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, who became Pope John Paul II. But there is much to admire in the late pope’s drama, “The Jeweler’s Shop,” currently on view in New York, courtesy of the Storm Theatre, the first in an ambitious and praiseworthy series of all his major works. The 1960 play is probably the best-known title (if any can truly be considered well-known) of the former actor’s theatrical work. There was a movie with Burt Lancaster and Olivia Hussey in 1988. On stage, in Boleslaw Taborski’s translation of the original Polish, the definition of “play” is stretched to the limit. The playwright himself slyly subtitled it “A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Passing on Occasion Into a Drama” when it was first published, as if to acknowledge the lack of dramatic incident. Still, it’s a fascinating piece.