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VATICAN CITY – When Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, one of his first decisions was to stop presiding over beatification ceremonies.

WASHINGTON – For the first time, more than 100 senior Muslim leaders from around the world sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders proposing theological similarities as a basis for peace and understanding.

FRANKLIN PARK, Ill. – Holy Ghost Father Lucien Deiss, a liturgical music composer and a liturgical consultant at the Second Vatican Council, died Oct. 9 in his native France. He was 86 years old.

WASHINGTON – During Catholicos Karekin II’s visit to Washington Oct. 11, the wind whipping through the nation’s capital may have threatened to send hats and papers flying, but the commitment to religious freedom of interfaith leaders gathered with him at the Jefferson Memorial remained firmly grounded.

Some 150 clerics and lay people from several dioceses in the Mid-Atlantic states traveled to the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center in Columbia Oct. 10 to learn how to better serve their growing Latino congregations and to effectively unite the English and Spanish-speaking communities.

VATICAN CITY – Human beings, including embryos, must never be manipulated or exploited for scientific and medical research, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Sister Monika Bies, 41, first felt called at 18, “but that sort of came and went,” she said with a laugh. She carved out a thoroughly modern life in her native Germany, studying political economics and then working for the German government and the United Nations. She lived in different cities and was in a relationship with a significant guy. Her two brothers married and had children.

BERKELEY, Calif. – The future of the Catholic Church as a global force depends on shared power and mutual respect between the church’s historic center in Western Europe and its fast-expanding population base in the Southern Hemisphere, Georgetown University theologian Father Peter Phan told an audience in Berkeley Oct. 6.

WARSAW, Poland – Police evicted several dozen former nuns from a Polish convent after they refused a series of court orders to leave.

Three priests are trading suburban life in Winsor Mill for remodeled living quarters in the crime-ridden West Baltimore neighborhood surrounding St. Edward.

As Ed Ruane of Charles Village settled into a cushioned swivel chair at the Beatnik Barbershop in Mount Vernon, he instructed the barber to trim the sides, shape the top and clean his neck.