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ANNAPOLIS – In an unusual move that highlights the priority Maryland’s bishops have placed on abolishing the death penalty, Bishop Denis J. Madden, urban vicar, testified in person during Feb. 21 committee hearings on a bill that would replace the death penalty with life sentences without parole. Representatives of the Maryland Catholic Conference usually testify on behalf of the Maryland bishops, but Bishop Madden personally urged members of the Senate Judicial Proceedings and House Judiciary committees to pass the controversial legislation.

LIMA, Peru – When church leaders from throughout Latin America gather in Brazil in May for the fifth general conference of the Latin American bishops’ council, they will be grappling with the contradictions of life on the world’s most Catholic continent. While more than 450 million of the region’s 551 million people are considered Catholic, “the practice of the Christian faith is in profound crisis, which is reflected in the type of societies we have,” Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri of San Marcos, Guatemala, president of the Guatemalan bishops’ conference, told Catholic News Service. “They are societies in which there is a great deal of violence, societies that try to follow lifestyles in which consumerism and hedonism predominate, societies that lack social justice.”

WHEELING, W.Va. – To see firsthand the latest advances in coal mine safety and the daily operations of a mine, Bishop Michael J. Bransfield of Wheeling-Charleston joined West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and others on a tour of the McElroy Mine, near Moundsville, the largest coal mine in West Virginia. In a news conference at Wheeling Jesuit University Feb. 19 following the tour, J. Davitt McAteer, vice president for sponsored programs at the university and special mine safety adviser to Manchin, said the purpose of the visit was to look at the emergency communication systems between its mines, the telephone communication systems being developed and tested there and at other facilities, and the steps being taken to introduce new technology into U.S. mines.

Father Joseph Breighner truly hit a nail on the head in his column ‘Truth behind abortion should be in the news as often as the war in Iraq,” (CR, Feb. 8). He so aptly compared and contrasted the loss of life in the Iraq war with the loss of lives resulting from abortion on demand.

After many years of work with Catholic Relief Services, Lent, and its seasonal period of reflection, prayer, fasting and almsgiving, grows more meaningful to me year after year. It’s not just because of the stories I hear about the help that CRS provides to those who are suffering. It is the fact that with each season of Lent we are coming closer and closer to the realization of a global community – of one human family.

Enacting a ban on human cloning in Maryland will be a central focus of the 28th annual Maryland Candlelight March for Life, March 12 in Annapolis. Prolife supporters from across the state will rally at the state capital, asking lawmakers to support the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2007 – a Senate bill that prohibits the manufacture of human embryos through the cloning process.

The president of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, Baltimore, Father John Swope, S.J., announced the appointment of three key staff positions for the new school slated to open fall 2007.

LAHORE, Pakistan – Posters pasted on billboards and trees by the country’s main Muslim political alliance blare the “Quran-prescribed” punishments of 100 lashes or death by stoning for women who have sex outside of marriage. As a new bill liberalizing strict women’s laws makes its way through Parliament, hard-line groups have been fighting to keep a status quo they claim has divine sanction. The same day the new bill went before the National Assembly Feb. 13, the first national Catholic women’s organization was launched in Lahore, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency.

SAN DIEGO – Migrant camps have existed in the Carmel Valley area of north San Diego County longer than most of the area’s housing, certainly longer than the million-dollar homes that now carpet the valley east of Del Mar. Home to the men and women who work in the vegetable and flower fields, the makeshift camps are out of sight and, typically, out of mind for the majority of residents in the area. But some residents, worrying about the potential for crime, are wary of having the camps so close to their homes.