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Not long ago, Aminata Yattara sat at home on a stool in the dirt, pounding millet and dreaming about the day she could toss the pestle and pick up a pencil. School dominated her thoughts on her way to pull water from the well. She thought about it when she helped her mom wash dishes. But with four siblings and a poor family, Aminata’s chances for school seemed slim. And in this hot, dusty district in Mali where only about a third of girls go to school, the deck was stacked against her. So she pumped water and pounded millet, day after day, always jealous of her older brother who attended school. But Aminata was lucky. Her father, a rice and millet farmer, had once been to school, but quit. Fortunately, this 40-something father of five remembered the value of education. “Today, I regret that,” Haba Yattara says. “At that time, I did not know the importance, and I didn’t have someone behind me to make me go. So I dropped out. I want my girls to go to school so that they don’t take the same path as me.”

Each summer, thousands of vacationers descend on Deep Creek Lake to enjoy boating, skiing and fishing for bass or pickerel. They are also able to worship at special outdoor liturgies thanks to a ministry of St. Peter in Oakland that helps make sure God is a part of their vacation. “They come to Mass by car and by boat, and most bring their own chairs or blankets for the grass,” said Father Donald Parson, pastor of St. Peter, noting that an altar is set up in a the bandstand area of a patio for Mass at “St. Peter at the Lake.” When it’s too cold to be outside, the liturgy moves indoors to a local tavern. “The vistas are just breathtaking,” the priest said. “It’s an incredibly beautiful area.” Deep Creek Lake was built by the Youghiogheny Hydro-Electric Corporation when the Pennsylvania-based company acquired rights to build dams across Deep Creek and the Youghiogheny River.

OTTAWA – Tony Vella, the great-nephew of Father George Preca, said he hopes the charismatic Maltese priest’s life and virtues will be remembered long after his June 3 canonization. Vella called his mother’s uncle, whom he knows as “Dun Gorg,” a “pioneer of the lay apostolate.” Vella, 64, of Kingston, Ontario, served Blessed Preca as an altar boy in his native town of Hamrun, Malta, and “used to see him pretty well every day,” Vella said in a May telephone interview from Kingston. When Blessed Preca began his ministry, Malta, an island nation off the coast of Italy, was largely illiterate. Although Malta is Catholic, the faith there was mingled with superstition. As a deacon, Blessed Preca started “religious discussions” with sailors in the Grand Harbor area and began building relationships with local youths.

ROME – U.S. President George W. Bush has been invited to visit the Sant’Egidio Community, a Catholic lay community known for leading high-profile peace negotiations as well as being active in the fight against the death penalty and HIV/AIDS. The White House received the invitation but as of May 23 still had to decide if the president would visit with the community’s leaders, sources in Rome told Catholic News Service. Bush is scheduled to be in Rome June 8-9. Sant’Egidio spokesman Mario Marazziti told CNS that until the president’s schedule was finalized there was no comment on the proposed visit.

VATICAN CITY – Vatican and Israeli representatives said they finally have a concrete plan for reaching an agreement on financial and juridical issues related to Catholic institutions in Israel. “The talks took place in an atmosphere of great cordiality, mutual understanding and good will, and produced important progress and hope for yet further advances in the coming months,” said a joint statement issued after the representatives met May 21 at the Vatican. The meeting marked the first time in five years that the full membership of the bilateral permanent working commission met to discuss the issues related to church property, taxation and the legal rights of church institutions in Israel.

APARECIDA, Brazil – More than halfway through a major meeting in which bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean are hammering out pastoral priorities, the “great continental mission” that several bishops predicted would emerge has not been a priority. “We haven’t discussed it, so we don’t know what it will be like or if it will be done. We haven’t addressed it yet,” said Archbishop Joao Braz de Aviz of Brasilia, Brazil. Instead, as the bishops met in small groups or subcommissions on different topics May 22 and 23, several issues discussed since the meeting began May 13 were missing from the outline on which their discussions were based. The outline, which will also serve as a framework for a document that will guide pastoral work in the region for the next 10 to 15 years, contains 16 topics grouped under seven major themes.

When the second collection basket is passed to parishioners around the Archdiocese of Baltimore June 2 and 3, their donations will be given to evangelization programs nationwide in the black, Native American, Eskimo and Aleut communities. The Black and Native American Missions collection has been conducted throughout the United States since 1884, with proceeds distributed as grants to dioceses supporting and strengthening evangelization programs that would otherwise be in danger of disappearing, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The idea is to bring existing Catholics in those groups back to the faith and to encourage others to examine the dogma and consider converting to Catholicism, said Therese Wilson Favors, director of the office of African American Ministries for the Archdiocese of Baltimore.