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VATICAN CITY – Church leaders, along with the World Health Organization, have expressed concern over the increased rates of drug-resistant tuberculosis worldwide. Pope Benedict XVI, speaking at his general audience March 21, said the latest reports show that more work is still needed to effectively treat those who suffer from the disease. World Tuberculosis Day, a WHO-sponsored initiative to focus attention on one of the world’s most deadly diseases, was being marked March 24. A WHO statement issued March 22 had good news and bad news: The rate of infection leveled off for the first time in 13 years, but new and potentially more lethal versions of the disease have emerged.

ST. PAUL. Minn. – Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis said he barred celebration of Mass at a national meeting on homosexuality and Catholicism because the sponsoring organization dissents from aspects of church teaching. People with homosexual orientation “are children of God, not outcasts,” but the truths of the Catholic Church need to be respected, he said in a March 19 statement given to The Catholic Spirit, archdiocesan newspaper.

Parishioners throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore will have an opportunity to participate in a 120-year-old tradition when the second collection basket comes their way Good Friday (April 6). As it has for more than a century, the Good Friday collection will help the church persevere in the Holy Land. The need for support for the Holy Land is just as urgent as it was when Pope Leo XIII established the annual Pontifical Collection in 1887, according to Holy Land Franciscans in Washington, D.C.

A funeral Mass for Baltimore native Brother John Edward Fick, S.M., was held March 22 at St. Joseph, Sykesville. He died March 10 at Mercy-Siena Woods Retirement Community in Dayton, Ohio. He was 90.

As the mother of a son with a disability who attends religious education classes at St. John, Westminster, I was heartened to read about other children with disabilities who attend religious education classes in the archdiocese (CR, March 15). All of the teachers and aides should be recognized for their selfless volunteerism.

Isn’t it ironical that in the article announcing the Holy Father’s exhortation on the Eucharist, the writer includes this line: “Christ, ‘who is present in the bread and wine through the power of the Holy Spirit.’ The teaching of the Church is that when Christ is present in the Eucharist, bread and wine no longer exist.”

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has conducted raids in recent weeks at workplaces across the U.S. to round up workers who are in the country illegally. In two communities where raids took place March 6 – South Bend, Ind., and New Bedford, Mass. – members of the Catholic community and the wider community continue to help families torn apart by the federal action, especially children left in limbo. A majority of the detainees in both places were women, many of them single parents with babies or toddlers.

VATICAN CITY – Human freedom must be exercised in accordance with God’s law, including the obligation to protect human life, said members of a dialogue commission representing the Vatican and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. “Freedom of choice is derived from God and therefore is not absolute, but must reflect divine will and law,” said members of the Catholic-Jewish commission at the end of their mid-March meeting in Jerusalem.