DETROIT — Just as St. Patrick evangelized Ireland in the fifth century, an Irish priest studying in Detroit says the Irish of the 21st century now need the new evangelization called for by the late Pope John Paul II.
DETROIT — Just as St. Patrick evangelized Ireland in the fifth century, an Irish priest studying in Detroit says the Irish of the 21st century now need the new evangelization called for by the late Pope John Paul II.

WARSAW, Poland — Russia’s Catholic bishops have urged the newly elected president, Dmitri Medvedev, to strengthen ties with religious communities and help remove bureaucratic obstacles to the work of foreign clergy in the country.
ROME — The Sri Lankan navy has confiscated permanent housing that a Jesuit aid agency had built for refugees affected by the country’s civil war.

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian gunman’s attack on a Jewish seminary was a “monstrous” atrocity, said a former director of Jerusalem’s Franciscan seminary. Father Artemio Vitores, vicar of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, told Catholic News Service he has lived through five wars and two Palestinian uprisings in the Holy Land, but the attack on the seminary, or yeshiva, affected him on a more personal level.
ROME (CNS) — The Jesuit General Congregation concluded two months of work by approving five decrees, including one on obedience, and a separate document reaffirming the Jesuits’ allegiance to the pope and fidelity to church teaching.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With fewer and fewer Catholics going to confession, Pope Benedict XVI urged priests and seminarians to make the sacrament of penance a time for sinners to feel God’s merciful love.

More than 750 men, women and students packed a ballroom in Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel March 4 to applaud the efforts of the honorees at Catholic Charities’ annual distinguished service awards banquet.

ANNAPOLIS – Standing on the marble floors of the State House just outside the House of Delegates chamber, 12-year-old Cameron Wood was still beaming after his first successful effort as a lobbyist. The seventh-grader from Our Lady of Victory School in Arbutus was one of 400 nonpublic school students who converged on Annapolis March 6 to ask their lawmakers to support nonpublic school students and teachers.
The journey of Holy Week, which begins this Palm Sunday, is a journey of apparent tragedy. A young rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, who preached love, who healed the sick, raised the dead, and gave hope to the hopeless, is to be crucified as a false prophet and blasphemer. How unfair can life be?

Grinning impishly, 15-year-old Frances Grace Borowsky looked at her parents and declared: “I think they’ve done a good job so far.”

There are few symbols of the Resurrection more powerful to Father Samuel Young than the empty tomb. The image helps crystallize what Christianity is all about, he said – that Christ conquered death and gave new life to the world.
Erickson Retirement Communities, the Baltimore-based senior housing developer that operates Charlestown and Oak Crest Village, donated $1.2 million to nonprofit organizations across the country last year.
