Home Page

After six years of retirement in Florida, Dave and Phyllis Gemmell returned to Catonsville in 2002 to be closer to their children and grandchildren, and wound up as devoted volunteers for their adopted parish, St. Benedict in Baltimore. The couple says the community spirit in their parish is so strong, it inspires them to help out in any way they can.

Serving as host of the National Catholic Educational Association’s 104th convention and exposition brings a lot of benefits to Baltimore, according to Dr. Ronald J. Valenti, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Not only will the archdiocese get to showcase its rich educational history and experience April 10-13, Baltimore teachers will be able to learn from some of the top Catholic educators in the country.

Although the entire room calls Dorothy Dixon “Grandma,” she has no grandchildren. The 91-year-old soup kitchen coordinator answers to the pet name from some 100 community members who visit St. Cecilia, Baltimore, on Thursdays to eat a hot supper. The lively Ms. Dixon, dressed from neck to foot in red including blazer, sweater, skirt and slouch boots, walks three blocks daily from her home that she shares with her 86-year-old sister, Lucille Talley, to serve her parish of 53 years. Her first self-appointed duty is to feed the birds. “They’re Father Sy’s birds,” she said about St. Cecilia’s pastor, Father Sylvester Peterka, C.M. “He’s a country boy. I’ve been feeding birds since I was 5 years old.”

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France – The French nun who believes she was healed of Parkinson’s disease thanks to Pope John Paul II said her life had “totally changed” since that night two months after the pope’s death. Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, 46, is working again, now in Paris at a maternity hospital run by her order, the Little Sisters of Catholic Motherhood. She met reporters March 30 in Aix-en-Provence during a press conference with Archbishop Claude Feidt of Aix, the archdiocese where the cure took place. “I was sick and now I am cured,” she told reporters. “I am cured, but it is up to the church to say whether it was a miracle or not.”

Though Catholic groups formed educational instruction in Baltimore in the 1790s, most educators consider a city school on Paca Street founded by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1806 as the cradle of U.S. Catholic education. In founding St. Frances Academy in Baltimore in 1828, Mother Mary Lange officially offered Catholic education to children of color and that tradition continues on as the co-educational high school on Chase and Eager streets strives for a superior learning experience.

From her experience working side-by-side with women religious, Sister Peggy Mattare, S.S.N.D., has discovered that most sisters are “workaholics.” Always putting the needs of others first, she said, many in the consecrated life don’t make time to take care of themselves.
As the new wellness coordinator for the Atlantic-Midwest Province of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Sister Peggy is determined to help sisters stay healthy in body, mind and spirit. Her goal is to foster healthy lifestyles so when sisters reach their senior years, they can live to their “full potential.”