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St. Patrick got bumped by St. Joseph, but both saints find their feast days shifted this year due to a quirk of the calendar. Their feast days fall during Holy Week and must be moved because nothing takes precedence over Holy Week, said Monsignor Robert J. Jaskot, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

ROME – The new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon, arrived in Rome Feb. 15 and said she looked forward to working with the Vatican on issues of religious freedom and religious tolerance.

Martha Collinson quietly instructs a worker with developmental disabilities on how to glue two pieces of wood together. The production manager for Providence Center Inc. patiently shows him how to spread the glue several times, and when the pieces are securely clamped, she moves on to the sanding room. There workers are sanding wood inlaid in patterns that form a cross.

CANBERRA, Australia – Members of Parliament and visitors gave Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a standing ovation after he made a long-awaited apology to Australia’s Aboriginal peoples.

ATKINS, Ark. – Assumption Church’s annual Valentine’s roast beef dinner became an affair of the heart for victims of a February tornado that swept through Atkins, killing four people and damaging or destroying more than 100 homes and businesses.

SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said he was “neither advised nor consulted” by St. Mary’s University officials when the school agreed to host a Feb. 13 evening rally for Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton sponsored by the group “Texas for Hillary.”

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – A “hierarchy of values” exists, which means not all political issues are of equal value, said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn. “Our faith must inform our political decisions,” he said, and Catholic voters are obliged to distinguish “between moral evil,” such as abortion, “and matters of prudential judgment,” such as tuition tax credits.