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The Loyola Blakefield, Towson, swim team proved they knew the ‘reason for the season’ when they began their Christmas break by diving into charity work. Thirty-six swimmers participat­ed in a 100-mile swim at the school Dec. 20-21, raising more than $5,000 for the new Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore. Proceeds will be presented to Father John Swope, S.J., president of the co-educational school set to open in 2007. The first swimmer hit the water at 9 a.m. sharp on Dec. 20 and the last mile was clocked in 27 hours later. “It’s just a fun event, especial­ly when we get close to the finish mile,” said team captain and chair­man of the event, senior Andrew Balhoff.

In the Hispanic culture, the Epiphany is almost as important as Christmas. It is the day when the three kings traveled far from home to visit a newborn baby, in the City of Bethlehem. For the past four years, Woodmont Academy, Cooksville, Spanish teacher Patricia Stack has been helping to educate students from pre-kindergarten to third grade about this joyous event as they learn about the Hispanic culture. This year she organized holiday festivities for her 150 students from Jan. 4-5.

IRVING, Texas (CNS) — Participating in Boy Scouts is a great way for youths to meet people in all walks of life and help them discern their own vocations, says Monsignor John B. Brady, a 65-year veteran of Scouting. In an interview with Scouting, a family magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America, Monsingor Brady said jamborees — nine-day national or international gatherings of Scouts and their leaders — provide opportunities for vocational discernment “not equaled in any other environment.”

OXFORD, England (CNS) — Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus has become the new head of the Warsaw Archdiocese, despite findings by a church commission that he collaborated with Poland’s former communist secret police. “From the material presented, it seems various bad intentions and attitudes about the church are being attributed to me,” Archbishop Wielgus said in a Jan. 5 statement. “This is a falsification. There is absolutely no documentation to prove it, beyond the words of functionaries who viewed my person and the whole issue in their own way. “I never betrayed Christ and his church in deeds, words or intentions. I never inflicted any harm on anyone,” the bishop said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — At first glance, the ambassadors accredited to the Vatican seem to be a group of elegant, older men gracefully ending their diplomatic careers in a posting filled with pomp and circumstance. The suits with tails, the swords, the plumed hats, sashes and medals highlight the formality of public occasions and the long tradition of nations sending envoys to the Vatican, said Giovanni Galassi, dean of the Vatican diplomatic corps and San Marino’s ambassador to the Holy See. “But we also must have something real to say; we must serve the world in some way,” Galassi said Jan. 3, the 20th anniversary of the day he presented his credentials as ambassador to Pope John Paul II.

ANNAPOLIS – With the Jan. 10 start of the 423rd session of the Maryland General Assembly, leaders of the Maryland Catholic Conference have high hopes the new legislature and the newly-elected governor will give attention to issues they believe have been neglected in recent years. Chief among them are a long-sought repeal of the death penalty, an expansion of programs benefiting the poor, the establishment of a business tax credit to help nonpublic schools and a ban on human cloning. The political lobbying arm of Maryland’s Catholic bishops will also seek $1 million for a new program aiding women in crisis pregnancies and a restoration of funding to the textbook/technology loan program for students in nonpublic schools. Although Gov.-elect Martin J. O’Malley will inherit a $1.3 billion surplus when the Democratic mayor of Baltimore leaves City Hall for Annapolis Jan. 17, long-term structural deficits are projected for coming years as the gap between revenues and spending is expected to widen. That will mean MCC leaders will spend much of their time convincing lawmakers to spare the poor and vulnerable from the budget-cutting ax.