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BALTIMORE – Enrollment figures for Catholic schools in the 2006-07 academic year show “a continued significant decline in the elementary school population and a slight increase in secondary school enrollment,” according to a report by the National Catholic Educational Association. Total enrollment fell by 1.8 percent, or 42,569 students, said the annual statistical report prepared by Sister Dale McDonald, a Sister of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary who is NCEA director of public policy and educational research.

It’s heating up in the IAAM softball league as defending A Conference champions Archbishop Spalding High School, Severn, and defending B Conference champions, Maryvale Preparatory School, Brooklandville, continue their winning ways. On April 13, Spalding’s top hurler, Stephanie Weigman, threw a no-hit, shutout by sitting down all but one batter in a 1-0 win over home team Institute of Notre Dame, Baltimore, at Patterson Park. The Cavs (5-1, 9-2) are ranked No. 3 and the Indians (4-2, 12-2) are right behind them in the Metro Prep Poll. The Cavaliers and Indians will meet again April 27 at Randazzo Park.

A funeral Mass for Sister Joseph Miriam (Mary Elizabeth) Sheehan, S.P. was offered April 3. Sister Joseph died March 29. She was 88.

A funeral Mass for Deacon Thomas Yorkshire will be offered at 10 a.m. April 21 at St. Gregory the Great, Baltimore. Deacon Yorkshire died April 11. He was 72. Born in Mechanicsville in 1935, Deacon Yorkshire was a son of the late Booker T. and Hazel Yorkshire Everett.

MOSCOW – A Russian Orthodox leader said U.S. government attitudes toward religious freedom follow a Western “ideology of human rights.” “U.S. experts are superficial and biased when judging the Orthodox Church’s approach to understanding human rights and the problems of church-state relations,” said Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations.

Mary Breslin, reviewing Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (CR, April 12) asserts “cause for a meltdown among those who would refute Mr. Gore’s claims.”

A bit of a correction to your piece “Baltimore is cradle of U.S. Catholic Education” (CR, April 5).

St. Agnes, Catonsville, is inviting Catholics who have become inactive in the church to take another look at the church. If individuals have friends or family members who have “fallen away” and are not sure how to reach out to them, members of the Catholics Returning Home team at St. Agnes would be pleased to contact them and extend a personal invitation.

How can we make the Blessed Virgin weep? How about taking the sacramental that is associated with her and with world peace and naming it for an elite corps of killers – say, a “Ranger Rosary?” (CR, April 5)

ALBANY, N.Y. – Bishop Daniel W. Herzog, recently retired Episcopal bishop of Albany, and his wife, Carol, have left the Episcopal Church and re-entered full communion with the Catholic Church. Both were raised as Catholics and joined the Episcopal Church as adults. In a letter to his successor, Bishop William H. Love, Bishop Herzog said his decision was a result of the decision of the 2003 General Convention of the U.S. Episcopal Church to affirm the election and ordination of an openly gay man, Bishop Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Referring to the turmoil that action caused in the church, he said, “That turmoil was not merely external. It also caused a lot of hidden tears.”

March kicked off the four-week Cool Kids Campaign Reading Challenge and six Catholic schools have opened their books: St. Pius X School, Rodgers Forge; Holy Family School, Randallstown; St. Ursula School, Parkville; St. Katharine, Baltimore; St. Margaret School, Bel Air; and School of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Homeland.