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Full of energy and with the gift of gab, St. Joseph, Cockeysville, parishioner Geri Olsen is the perfect volunteer for St. Vincent Center in Timonium.

In the blink of an eye, the 65-year-old can start up a conversation with someone and have them making a donation to St. Vincent, a 70¬ bed residential facility for abused children with serious behavioral, psychiatric and/ or emotional problems.

“No matter where I am I just find I’m able to come into giving to St. Vincent’s,” said Mrs. Olsen. “I just think it’s a great cause. I’m always looking for new people who are interested.”

All Christians are called to become “holy and immaculate in love,” just as Mary was, Pope Benedict XVI said. The pope celebrated the Dec. 8 feast of the Immaculate Conception by reciting the Angelus prayer at the Vatican and by making an afternoon visit to a Marian monument in the center of Rome.

During his afternoon visit, the pope blessed a large basket of pink roses set at the foot of a column topped by a statue of Mary. The statue commemorates Pope Pius IX’s proclamation in 1854 that Mary was conceived free of original sin.

Catholic laypeople have been fasting in India’s capital for nearly two weeks to end discrimination against Christian dalits, or low castes without equal rights.Franklin Thomas, coordinator of the National Council of Dalit Christians, spoke to Catholic News Service about the hunger protest. The activists are reigniting the demand for Christian rights while the Indian Parliament is in its winter session.

Maria “Gladys” Garcia believes the key to a good educational foundation can be found between the colorful covers of books, and she has found a corner in St. Michael’s Church where she can join other parents who read to their children.

For Ginny Dauses, the 2,000 minutes included in her cell phone plan just aren’t enough. After all, the St. Mary High School, Annapolis, campus minister is constantly fielding calls from young people who want to say hello, see how she is doing, talk about their problems or ask what is on the schedule for the new God Uniting Students program.

When fund-raising efforts to restore the old church at St. Athanasius, Curtis Bay began in 2005, life-long parishioner Helen Swinko imagined it would take years before she would see the place where she received her first Communion utilized

Georges Selzer stood naked in the snow when guards at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland tattooed a camp number on his left forearm: 101100. Standing at a podium more than six decades later, the 95-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor calmly unbuttoned and rolled up his left sleeve to show some 30 students at The John Carroll School in Bel Air the deep purple digits that remain emblazoned on his body and in his soul.

Maria Santini of Parkville received an early Christmas present during her weekly visit to St. Michael the Archangel, Overlea. Dec. 3 – a Mass celebrated in her native Spanish language The Venezuelan-born parishioner of the church joined her two daughters and bilingual husband, along with more than 100 fellow Spanish-speaking Catholics, for the parish’s first Mass articulated in this language.