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NEW YORK (CNS) — The head of the National Black Catholic Apostolate for Life in New York has urged that Kwanzaa observances between Christmas and New Year’s Day reflect the sacredness of life. “Kwanzaa for Life 2006 is an occasion for us African-American Catholics to renew our value of family life, celebrate our heritage and defend the sacredness of life,” Franciscan Father James Goode said in announcing Kwanzaa for Life 2006. “Our contribution as black Catholics to Kwanzaa for Life will be to choose life and help our community choose life.” This year marks the sixth annual Kwanzaa for Life sponsored by the apostolate, which is supported by all the major black Catholic organizations in the United States.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (CNS) — Loretto Sister Jeannine Gramick has been honored as a laureate of the 2006 Mother Teresa Awards, sponsored by the St. Bernadette Institute of Sacred Art in Albuquerque. The award, presented in November in Los Angeles, acknowledges Sister Jeannine’s “role as American human rights activist, ministering to Catholic gays and lesbians,” according to a news release.

Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore condemned “revisionist history” of the Holocaust, the systematic efforts by Nazis during World War II to do away with Jews also known as the Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning devastation or catastrophe. The cardinal took particular exception to a Dec. 11-12 conference in Iran during which speakers “sought to diminish the scope of the Holocaust.”

A Polish archbishop told a group of nuns to leave their convent after the Vatican expelled them from their order for refusing to accept a new mother superior. “There are no private religious orders in the Catholic Church where everyone can set their own rules,” Archbishop Jozef Zycinski of Lublin told Poland’s Catholic information agency, KAI, in early December. “We should pray for these lacerated, lost and highly strung sisters.”

Maryland Gov.-elect Martin O’Malley heads the list of participants expected at the 14th Annual New Year’s Eve Interfaith Service at St. Ignatius, Baltimore, Dec. 31. The traditional Jewish, Christian and Muslim interfaith service will begin at 8 p.m. with a 30-minute musical program, followed by prayers for blessings in the New Year.

When the Angel Gabriel brought news of an “unexpected pregnancy” to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the young woman responded with a humble “yes” to bringing a new life into the world. In “Welcome the Child,” a newly released Christmas CD that features the music of area parishes, the decision of modern-day women to choose life is celebrated in song.

Currently posting a record of 4-2-1, the Archbishop Curley, Baltimore, Friars are turning their ice hockey program around. With only two wins on the books in 2005, the team is beginning to believe in themselves. This recent team confidence played out in a preseason tournament title win in Frederick, Maryland. “I thought they won the Stanley Cup when they won the Frederick High School Preseason Tournament,” said head coach Steve Wirth.

The small woman wearing layers of clothes, a worn jacket and a ragged knit cap has been homeless for the past five years and has yet to qualify for public assistance to move into a stable living situation. She has slept in shelters, transitional housing and even city public parks, but has found that being homeless is a full time job, requiring all of her energy to survive, with little or none left over to fulfill the requirements that would get her a permanent roof over her head.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Leaders of 29 national Christian, Jewish and Muslim organizations issued a joint call for the Bush administration and the new Congress to make Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace a top foreign policy priority. Peace is “an essential of faith” in all three religious traditions, they said.