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“You are like light for the whole world. In the same way your light must shine before people, so that they will see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5: 14, 16 Good News Bible).

My Dear Friends in Christ, As reported in The Catholic Review last week, St. Michael School in Frostburg – the last parish elementary school in far Western Maryland – will close its doors for good at the end of the current school year after over 110 years of educating the children of Allegany County in the Catholic faith. Years of declining enrollment (there are just 85 students enrolled this year, down from a high of 345 in 1968) and a corresponding affordability gap (tuition has risen by 500 percent over the past 20 years), required that the inevitable and sad decision to close the school be made.

Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., says that Catholics must be modern-day missionaries and bring the Gospel of Jesus to an increasingly secular culture.

Even before starting a family, Barry and Teresa Stitz led an active lifestyle. Eight years after the birth of the first of their three boys, the St. Joseph, Fullerton, parishioners still make health and fitness a priority in their family.

Even before starting a family, Barry and Teresa Stitz led an active lifestyle. Eight years after the birth of the first of their three boys, the St. Joseph, Fullerton, parishioners still make health and fitness a priority in their family.

Pope Pius IX died in 1878. The longest-reigning pope in history spent the last eight years of his pontificate as the self-styled “prisoner of the Vatican, as the anticlerical forces of Italian reunification had incorporated the ancient Papal States into the new Kingdom of Italy. (Pius had instructed his army to fire one volley, “for honor,” and then surrender their hopeless cause.) When Pius died, fears of foreign political interference in the election of a new pope led Britain’s Cardinal Henry Edward Manning to suggest that the conclave be held in Malta, under the protective guns of the Royal Navy.

Knott Scholarship Funds announced the winners of its 2008 scholarship competition, funded by the Marion Burk Knott Scholarship Fund and the Marion I. and Henry J. Knott Scholarship Fund.