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SAO PAULO, Brazil – Pope Benedict XVI encouraged Brazilian bishops to resist attacks on marriage and the family, seek out fallen-away Catholics and defend the rights and dignity of the poor.

In a lengthy speech May 11, the pope laid out guidelines for what he termed a “methodical evangelization aimed at personal and communal fidelity to Christ.”

What is needed in Brazil, he said, is a “leap forward in the quality of people’s Christian lives … so that they can bear witness to their faith in a clear and transparent way.”

Brazil’s 446 bishops constitute the largest episcopate in the world. The papal encounter in the Sao Paulo cathedral came two days before the pope was to inaugurate a Latin American-wide conference to deal with similar pastoral challenges.

SAO PAULO, Brazil – Pope Benedict XVI addressed a stadium full of enthusiastic Brazilian young people, telling them that a life lived without moral responsibility is a life wasted. At a rally May 10 in Sao Paulo, the pope warned against sexual infidelity, drug use and unethical shortcuts to success and said the desire to build a more just society depends on following God’s law. “Stretching out in front of you, my dear friends, is a life that all of us hope will be long; yet it is only one life, it is unique; do not let it pass in vain; do not squander it,” the pope said. “Live it with enthusiasm and with joy, but most of all with a sense of responsibility,” he said.

SAO PAULO, Brazil – Pope Benedict XVI canonized Brazil’s first native-born saint, an 18th-century Franciscan friar renowned for his charity to the poor and his legacy of miraculous healings. At an outdoor Mass May 11, the pope read a decree proclaiming sainthood for Father Antonio Galvao, prompting a surge of applause among the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered at a Sao Paulo airfield for the liturgy. As the saint’s relics were brought in procession to the altar, the crowd sang and waved banners and flags in the sunshine. In the front row, wearing bright blue habits, were Conceptionist nuns, whose order used St. Galvao as a spiritual adviser in the late 1700s.

CUMBERLAND – Nearly five years after Casper R. Taylor Jr. lost his seat in the House of Delegates and stepped down as Maryland’s longest-serving Speaker of the House of Delegates, the well-known Western Maryland native hasn’t backed away from public policy. While he no longer casts a vote or wields a gavel, Mr. Taylor serves as an influential lobbyist with the Alexander & Cleaver law firm – working on behalf of healthcare, wellness, nonprofit and business clients on public policy issues. The parishioner of St. Mary in Cumberland is also a member of the administrative board of the Maryland Catholic Conference, where he advises the public-policy making arm of Maryland’s Catholic bishops and is a key player in raising funds for the MCC’s new headquarters at 10 Francis Street in Annapolis.

W. King Pound, a parishioner of St. William of York in Baltimore who obtained national ads for Catholic newspapers and magazines during most of his 57-year career in advertising, died May 8 at his home in Baltimore. He was 82. A memorial service was to take place May 15 at Loudon Park cemetery in Baltimore, with a Mass and interment to follow July 3 at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia for the decorated veteran of World War II. Mr. Pound started his career in the Catholic press at The Catholic Review and helped found the Catholic Standard newspaper in the Washington Archdiocese in 1951. He served as advertising manager and later general manager of the Washington newspaper.

PARIS – When Nicolas Sarkozy is inaugurated as the president of France May 16, Catholics in the country will have some reasons to celebrate and some reasons to be wary. Sarkozy, the 52-year-old head of the Union for a Popular Movement political party, defeated Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal in the French elections May 6, winning 51.3 percent of the vote. The son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother with roots in Greece, Nicolas Paul Stephane Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa attended a private Catholic high school and describes himself as Catholic but an infrequent churchgoer.