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As an actor, Seamus Dockery played roles in television, film and on stage, including a bit part in “The Exorcist” and in AARP commercials. Before retiring, Mr. Dockery prepared students to appear on stage when he was an acting and directing professor at Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore. A new role he recently assumed isn’t in front of the camera or under hot stage lights, but behind the scenes as a volunteer mentor at Christopher Place Employment Academy, Baltimore. The academy has a residential component which supports addiction recovery and helps formerly homeless men become productive members of the community.

Dolores Orlando of Towson recently walked into the Catholic Corner Bookstore determined to find specific Christmas cards and a statue of St. Joseph, and looked relieved when she spotted the establishment’s owner, Joan Linz. “Joan, I really need your help,” said Ms. Orlando, an Immaculate Conception, Towson, parishioner. The bookshop keeper, a parishioner of St. Ursula in Parkville, assured her longtime customer a shipment of Christmas cards would be arriving later that evening and helped her select a St. Joseph statue for a friend. This is the kind of help on which 50-year-old Ms. Linz thrives, and it is part of her store’s mission to provide fellow Catholics with the tools to become closer to God.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A new Vatican calendar features photos of Pope Benedict XVI relaxing, but the pope’s own agenda for 2007 leaves little time for repose. The Vatican will be a busy place throughout the year, with hundreds of papal meetings, liturgies and other events already scheduled and several documents in the pipeline. The pope will make at least two foreign trips, including his first intercontinental journey, and sometime during the year is likely to name another batch of new cardinals.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (CNS) — The question made Duane Olberding laugh: Are you as jolly as Old St. Nick? “I don’t know about being as jolly as Old St. Nick, but I do enjoy helping people get a nice Christmas tree,” said Olberding, a member of St. Joseph Parish in Leavenworth. Olberding, who recently retired as a guidance counselor at Immaculata High School in Leavenworth, has played a key role in making Christmas merry for Leavenworth families since 1984.

PORTLAND, Ore. (CNS) — The Archdiocese of Portland will not need to sell off parish or school property under terms of a $75 million settlement between the archdiocese and almost 150 sex abuse claimants. The more than 100-page settlement plan was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland Dec. 18, a week after U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan stood with church officials and victims’ lawyers in a federal courthouse in Eugene to say the claims had been settled after more than three months of arduous private negotiations.

Imagine living away from family and friends for months, facing isolation, depression, and loneliness while working backbreaking, sometimes 24-hour shifts on a container ship in foreign ports; sometimes with insufficient food, nothing to foster spirituality, delayed paychecks, meager entertainment and limited recreational time. Such is the reality for some merchant marines who labor intensively on the bleak-looking ships docked at Dundalk Marine Terminal and other Baltimore ports.

When approaching the front of Rita Martin’s Randallstown home, one can’t help but notice the attention the New All Saints, Liberty Heights, parishioner has given to the colorful Christmas decorations illuminating the house. But it’s the aroma of baking rum cakes that really lets new arrivers know the spirit of the holidays is alive and well in the 50-year-old Baltimore City school teacher’s home. In fact, Ms. Martin’s affinity for baking has earned her the nickname “the cake lady,” among parishioners.