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My family attended the Celebration of the Arts (CR, April 12) because I had an eighth- grade son who was performing with the Representation Band. This was my first experience with this evening and I was very amazed at the talent portrayed on the stage. I was blown away by how wonderful the young middle schoolers sounded. They didn’t play like children and having driven my son to many practices, I know how hard they worked.

I attended the Celebration of the Arts on Monday, and it was truly a wonderful opportunity for the students of our Catholic schools to display their talents. I was very happy to see the Catholic Review devote so much attention to the event.

Jumping into parish life at Ss. Philip and James in Baltimore helped convince Father Joseph Cosgrove he might be called to the priesthood. Whether it was bringing communion to the sick and shut-ins, serving on the pastoral council, reading the scriptures as a lector or reaching out to the poor through the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Father Cosgrove said he felt drawn to the priestly life. The personal relationships he cultivated in his ministry also helped steer him in the direction of the seminary, he said. “You begin to realize it’s something God’s calling you to and God will help you through it,” said Father Cosgrove, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Edgewater. “I think there’s a point when you feel that this is the right thing. I realized that that was the kind of work that gave me happiness.”

ROME – Heightened security and military preparedness alone cannot prevent acts of terrorism, because terrorism is born of real grievances twisted by hatred, said Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers. Cardinal Martino spoke at the opening of an April 23-27 seminar the council was holding with Catholic airport chaplains to discuss ways to promote dialogue and respond to terrorist threats and fears of terrorism among airport workers and passengers.

VATICAN CITY – After several years of study, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission said there are good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven. In a document published April 20, the commission said the traditional concept of limbo – as a place where unbaptized infants spend eternity but without communion with God – seemed to reflect an “unduly restrictive view of salvation.”

BLACKSBURG, Va. – Words are not enough to comfort grieving parents, said a priest who spent time with the parents of several of the slain Virginia Tech students when they first learned their son or daughter was dead. In the early hours after the murder rampage on campus that left 33 dead, Father James Arsenault, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Blacksburg, was at Montgomery Regional Hospital with those who were wounded and their families.

Anita DiGregory hasn’t an inkling on how to pronounce any of the Latin words in her son’s lessons, but that doesn’t prevent the mother of four from continuing her call to home school. “I absolutely love home-schooling and I wouldn’t do it any other way,” said Mrs. DiGregory. “It is so rewarding. I get to be the one who sees the light on their faces when they start reading. I get to be the one to grade their papers. I get to be with them all the time.”

Joseph Sheppard, an internationally acclaimed painter/sculptor will present an exhibition of more than 50 drawings, paintings and sculpture at the arts program gallery of the University of Maryland University College through June 18.

Being known as the “Poster Child of Smoke-Free Maryland” may have shined the political spotlight on Baltimore City Council Vice President Robert Curran, but the St. Francis of Assisi, Baltimore, parishioner doesn’t believe his successful push for city- and state-wide smoking bans is his greatest accomplishment as a public servant. Leading the charge to help Stadium Place become a nationally recognized senior housing complex at the site of the former Memorial Stadium in Waverly is what he deems his most shining triumph, but concedes the smoking ban is his highest profile political feat.