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By more than a 2-1 margin, Maryland voters support replacing the state’s death penalty with a life without parole prison sentence, according to the results of a poll commissioned by the Maryland Catholic Conference and released Feb. 28. While 56 percent of those surveyed said they support the death penalty, 61 percent said they believed life without parole was an acceptable substitute for capital punishment. Only 27 percent said it was not. The poll also found that legislators who vote for repeal would not likely face repercussions at election time. Nearly 30 percent of voters said they would be more likely to support such a legislator and 42 percent said it would not impact their vote.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The Syracuse Diocese made headlines when it denied former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe an opportunity to speak at his alma mater, Bishop Ludden Junior/Senior High School. Mr. McAuliffe was initially scheduled to speak to about 100 fellow alumni at Ludden Feb. 24, and hold a signing for his new book, “What a Party! My Life Among Democrats, Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals.” His appearance at the school was originally approved in January, but several days before the event the diocese withdrew permission for him to speak there.

SYDNEY, Australia – Australia has taken charge of the World Youth Day cross and Marian icon, symbols of the world’s largest youth event which have traveled tens of thousands of miles around the world. The cross and icon left Madagascar in February for Korea, where Australia’s stewardship began and will continue until the end of World Youth Day Sydney in July 2008.

VATICAN CITY – Two months after Pope Benedict XVI’s first choice as archbishop of Warsaw, Poland, resigned amid accusations of collaborating with communists, the pope named a 57-year-old bishop to take the post. Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz, who had been bishop of Koszalin-Kolobrzeg, was named archbishop of Warsaw March 3. Newspapers have published quotations from the file that communist Poland’s secret police kept on the cleric, saying that he repeatedly had refused to cooperate. A Polish priest’s new book describes how the secret police attempted over the course of 12 years to recruit Archbishop Nycz as an informer but gave up in the face of his refusals.

Testifying in favor of a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Richard J. Dowling told members of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee it is proper to codify a historical definition of marriage that has withstood the test of time.

WASHINGTON – A Jesuit priest is to be reinstated as a chaplain at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center after a federal board ruled that he was fired because of religious discrimination. Father Henry Heffernan, 76, was ordered to be reinstated at the NIH clinic in Bethesda, Md., by the Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal agency that hears personnel disputes. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in January that Father Heffernan was wrongly suspended and fired in 2004. The merit systems board, a quasi-judicial entity, upheld the decision in a Feb. 23 order.

For three children at Ascension School in Halethorpe, the 2006 Cardinal’s Lenten Appeal guaranteed a Catholic school education this year. The outpouring of contributions from Catholics throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore last year was just “pennies shy” of the $6 million Cardinal William H. Keeler sought for philanthropic endeavors in the region, and he is hoping to raise the full amount this year by Easter Sunday, said Kathleen M. Whitelock, marketing director for the archdiocesan Department of Development.

CHICAGO – Church teaching on end-of-life issues is much more than “dilemmas and controversies,” a priest-physician told a gathering of Catholic health care ethicists in Chicago March 1. “Don’t let people hijack our church anymore,” said Jesuit Father Myles N. Sheehan, a geriatric oncologist who is senior associate dean for educational programs at the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago.