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The Office of the Propagation of the Faith is inviting teens ages 16 to 18 to apply for a service journey to El Salvador, July 22-29. “I want to expose the youth of the archdiocese to another culture while assessing the needs both spiritually and physically of the people of the Diocese of Chalatenango,” said Deacon Rodrigue Mortel, M.D., director of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith and the Baltimore-Haiti Solidarity Project.

Chris Cook’s grandfather and uncle both thought about becoming priests. Each joined the seminary before falling in love and getting married. Now at the age of 13, Chris feels a calling to the priesthood and he thinks the third time could be a charm.

Third-grade teacher aide and lunchroom monitor Maureen Bodensteiner can still do splits and cartwheels, talents leftover from her days as a cheerleading squad captain. Wearing a 1960’s flip-styled hair and sporting pom-poms, she played cheerleader along with 11 other teachers during the first annual Resurrection/St. Paul School, Ellicott City, student and faculty/staff basketball game held at Mount Hebron High School March 29. Thirty-five eighth graders and 20 faculty/staff members put sneakers to the court in front of 650 spectators to raise more than $2,700 to benefit The Believe In Tomorrow House at St. Casimir, Baltimore, affiliated with John’s Hopkins Children’s Center (visit www.believeintomorrow.org).

VATICAN CITY – The working world must not just be about competition and productivity; today’s workers must also make room for charity and defending human dignity, said Pope Benedict XVI. “Today more than ever it’s urgent and necessary” to live as Christians in the workplace and to become “apostles among workers,” the pope said. “Becoming more competitive and productive is not the only thing that matters,” he said in a message to young people. “Paying charitable witness” in the workplace and elsewhere is necessary, he said.

The U.S. Department of Education reports that 4 million potential college degree recipients have been “lost” during the past 20 years, due to lack of information available to them about admissions, financial aid, SAT preparation and college application guidance. Many of these students are America’s top-performing, lower-income high school graduates.

Shelia Wharam deserves our applause for her excellent exposé of Plan B, ‘the morning after pill,’ in “Strong Poison” (CR, March 22). She showed that Plan B does not reduce the number of pregnancies or abortions, and in fact it does itself function as an abortifacient. Also, one of its side effects is the life-threatening tubular pregnancy. Ms. Wharam recommends Plan C – chastity – instead of Plan B.

Terrorists attacked the United States the first day Dr. B. Curtis Turner spent with his students as the new principal of The Seton Keough High School in Baltimore in 2001. A week later, two of his students were involved in a serious car accident. A week after that, one of those students died from her injuries. “It was a difficult time, but I saw how the school really integrated God and family into one,” said Dr. Turner, a parishioner of St. Joseph in Largo who is in formation to become a permanent deacon for the Archdiocese of Washington. “I was glad to be at a Catholic school where Christ was at the center,” he said. “The students were incredibly resilient. It was really clear that their faith in Christ was the foundation for everything.”

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has named Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, to serve as the camerlengo, the chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church. While the pope is alive, the job is basically just a title. But when a pope dies, the chamberlain is charged with sealing the papal apartments, chairing consultations about the papal funeral, making the practical preparations for the conclave to elect the next pope, and chairing a committee of cardinals taking care of the temporal affairs of the church until a new pope is elected.

FAIRFAX, Calif. – While the Catholic Church in California “does not seek to impose our values on anyone,” it is nonetheless called “to be a strong moral voice on what we believe is necessary for the well-being of society and the good of the human family,” the president of the California Conference of Catholic Bishops told an audience at St. Rita Parish in Fairfax March 27.

JERUSALEM – The faithful must be “more diligent” in searching for the light of God in order to use it to build a better future, said religious leaders in Jerusalem in an Easter message. “We re-search for the light that comes from God, illuminates all creation, guides every true believer in his search, and helps him to find God’s freedom for all his people together with his peace and justice,” the heads of Jerusalem churches said in a statement April 2.

Nancy Fortier Paltell, associate director for the respect life office of the Maryland Catholic Conference, said she was “disgusted” by the Maryland Senate Finance Committee’s rejection of a bill to ban human cloning. In an 8-3 vote March 26, the committee killed the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2007, sponsored by Sen. Roy Dyson of Southern Maryland.