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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.

WARSAW, Poland – Church leaders have vowed to press ahead with the dedication of a Catholic church in Azerbaijan a week after it was damaged by attackers. “The opening will undoubtedly take place – there’ve been no changes in our program,” said Father Rolandas Makrickas, an official at the Vatican’s Tbilisi-based nunciature. The newly completed Immaculate Conception Church in Baku was damaged April 10 by fire after explosives were hurled through its windows.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – They greet each other as family inside the small chapel at Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, with warm hugs, a “Comment ca va?” and three kisses on alternating cheeks.

Deacon Frederick Passauer and his wife Kathy were booming business owners of an insurance company in Manchester, when they heard God’s calling. The couple sold their business and their home and moved to the Deep Creek Lake area to start their new business, serving parishioners of western Maryland. “We knew this was our goal. To be in ministry,” said Mrs. Passauer. “The people here have really embraced us.”

VATICAN CITY – Breaching normal protocol, several participants in a 2005 Vatican-sponsored conference over the ethics of declaring someone brain dead have published the papers they delivered at the debate. Many of the papers reproduced in “Finis Vitae: Is Brain Death Still Life?” argue that the concept of brain death was devised mainly to expand the availability of organs for transplant and claim that some patients who had been pronounced brain dead continued to live for months or even years.

A funeral Mass for Sister Alvera Stead, O.S.F., was offered April 18 at Assisi House, Pa. Sister Alvera died April 14. She was 96.

I would like to address two problems my wife and I and our 10-year-old son encounter every time we attend Mass. We regularly attend the 5 p.m. Mass on Saturday but have also noticed this problem when our needs call for us to attend a Sunday Mass. That is the subject of people talking in church prior to Mass.

Patrick K. Clancy’s letter objecting to the term “Ranger Rosary” smacked of ignorance and ingratitude (CR, April 19). I suppose he would like to disarm St. Michael, excommunicated modern-day Joan of Arcs, and deny the final instruction Christ gave his disciples at the Last Supper – from now on sell your cloaks and buy swords (Luke 22:36).

A funeral Mass for Ellen V. Dunkes, formerly of Baltimore, was offered April 10 at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Woodlawn. Mrs. Dunkes died April 5 in Lewes Convalescent Center, Lewes, Del. She was 100.

The gathering space at Church of the Crucifixion, Glen Burnie, was packed with people of all ages April 17 as they sat down to a large meal and waited anxiously for the first Discovering Christ session to begin. Discovering Christ is a six-week series, stretching through May 22, which explores the foundations of the Catholic faith and is designed to help men and women encounter Christ, said Father Erik Arnold, pastor. The program was designed by ChristLife, a lay Catholic apostolate of evangelization in Baltimore.