Home Page

Parishes across the Archdiocese of Baltimore will mark the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Masses Dec. 8, a holy day of obligation. The feast celebrates that Mary, by special divine favor in anticipation of her role in salvation, was without sin from the moment she was conceived.

WASHINGTON – John Garvey, president of The Catholic University of America, said he was “gratified” by the dismissal of a complaint filed against the university saying its single-sex dorms discriminated against women.

The Concert Artists of Baltimore, the Peabody Children’s Chorus and the Archbishop Curley High School Ringers Handbell Choir will be the featured performers at a Dec. 15 Christmas concert at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.

VATICAN CITY – The deaths each year of more than a million people from AIDS, the suffering of their families and the new infections of hundreds of thousands of infants are unacceptable when the medicines needed to prevent them exist, a Vatican official said.

WASHINGTON – A White House spokesman said the Obama administration is working to “strike the right balance between expanding coverage of preventive services and respecting religious beliefs” as it decides on a religious exemption to the mandate that all health plans cover contraceptives and sterilizations by Jan. 1, 2013.

YIBIN, China – With police officers and dogs monitoring the crowd at St. Mary’s Church, Father Peter Luo Xuegang was ordained coadjutor bishop of Yibin Diocese in southwestern China’s Sichuan province.

A study conducted in the 1980s indicated that most priests and religious first seriously thought about ministry around the age of 11 and then again in their junior year of high school. Two years after that study, “Focus 11” was born. First instituted in the Archdiocese of Detroit, the program had two components: one aimed at 11-year-olds and one at 11th graders. It consisted of lesson plans, exercises, and prayer services designed to help our children explore this radical expression of their faith.