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VATICAN CITY – After a three-day trip to Austria in early September, Pope Benedict XVI is putting away his traveling shoes and settling in for a long fall and winter at the Vatican. The next foreign trip fixed firmly on the pope’s calendar is mid-July of 2008, when he plans to fly to Australia for World Youth Day celebrations.

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican has announced the excommunication of certain members of the Army of Mary, a sect in Canada whose teachings have been deemed dangerous and erroneous by church authorities. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, acting with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, declared the excommunication after the Army of Mary performed ordinations without church permission, the Canadian bishops’ conference said in a statement Sept. 12. The Army of Mary was founded in Quebec in 1971 by Marie-Paul Giguere, who said she was receiving visions from God. The organization’s publications suggested that Giguere was the reincarnation of Mary, a claim that led church leaders in 1987 to warn the faithful that the group could not be considered Catholic.

The Lady Owls of Towson Catholic High School, Towson, launched their first fall soccer tournament Sept. 7-8 on their home field, and captured the consolation round in this four-team tourney. Towson Catholic’s head coach Chuck Teal, an 18-year veteran, was pleased with his team’s 1-0 sudden victory win over Owings Mills High School saying, “Our freshman stopper, Brittany Lanahan has a strong left foot and buried a direct kick from five or six yards out. It was a great shot.” The Owls improved their record to 1-1 after a first round 4-0 loss to their IAAM league opponent, St. Timothy’s.

As Cardinal William H. Keeler blessed the new world headquarters for the Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services Sept. 12, he marveled at the craftsmanship of the renovated building and said it’s a testament to what can be accomplished when Catholics and Jews join forces. Comparing the $33 million project to his work with the Jewish-Catholic affairs for the U.S. bishops, the retiring head of the Archdiocese of Baltimore called the partnership between the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation and CRS to provide a state-of-the-art facility for the international relief agency in the old Stewarts Building an ecumenical accomplishment that will benefit people worldwide.

WASHINGTON – Because of growing deficits and declining enrollments faced by its center-city Catholic schools, the Archdiocese of Washington announced a proposal Sept. 7 to reconfigure a consortium made up of the 12 schools. According to the proposal, four of the 12 Catholic schools currently in the Center City Consortium would make up a new consortium and the other eight schools would form a values-based charter school group by the next school year. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run. Under the proposed plan, the parishes would lease their buildings to the charter operator.

HUNTINGTON, Utah –The wrenching search for six lost miners was over, leaving only funerals, a public memorial service and a private committal service for the three Catholic miners attended by family members. A funeral Mass for Luis Hernandez and Juan Carlos Payan was celebrated Sept. 6 at Mission San Rafael in Huntington. Concelebrated by Father Donald E. Hope, pastor of the mission and other parishes in the area, Father Omar Ontiveros of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City and Father Oscar Martinez of St. Joseph Parish in Ogden, the Mass focused on resurrection.

TAYBEH, West Bank – Beer flowed freely, the smell of grilled meat wafted in the air and the beat of the traditional “darbuka” drum resounded through the hillside as this all-Christian Palestinian village celebrated its version of the German Oktoberfest. Later, when evening fell over the village and people had their fill of sticky Arabic sweets and custard-filled doughnuts, the drum beats were replaced by the pounding sounds of Palestinian hip-hop groups while young, fashionably dressed Palestinians danced to the hypnotic rhythms. The Taybeh Oktoberfest has been celebrated in September for the past two years out of deference to Muslims who will mark their monthlong Ramadan fast in October.

SEOUL, South Korea – The Seoul Archdiocese has cautioned Catholics against meeting or consulting with an excommunicated African archbishop residing in South Korea. Lay Catholics are to consult with their parish priests if they are invited to any meeting with Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, former archbishop of Lusaka, Zambia, the Sept. 9 archdiocesan bulletin advised. The Asian church news agency UCA News reported the bulletin told Catholics, “Former Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who married a member of the Unification Church and caused a scandal, was excommunicated by the Vatican.”