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VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI will make his first visit to the synagogue of Rome in the fall, the city’s Jewish community announced.

When he became a priest in 1982, Father Patrick M. Carrion assumed he would serve in maybe five parishes in his lifetime. He was wrong.

St. John Regional Catholic School in Frederick was scheduled to receive a Summit Award March 12 from the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce.

Julian Bower’s letter, “Why non-Catholics in Catholic schools” (CR, Feb. 26), raises a legitimate point, if properly understood. Given the extreme financial challenges facing our parochial and other Catholic schools, should we be “subsidizing” the education of non-Catholics who, in many cases, wish to escape underperforming public schools by enrolling in a Catholic school? After all, aren’t all youngsters entitled to a decent education? Absolutely! But our Catholic schools are fundamentally and necessarily schools of religion, as one bishop expressed it to me years ago. We are not in the business of offering alternative schools simply or primarily as an escape from poor pedagogy.

Many critics of Pope Benedict XVI’s action lifting the excommunication of the four schismatic bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, including Bishop Richard Williamson, were uninformed about the pope’s duties to the Catholic Church. The unity of the universal church is the pope’s innate and paramount responsibility. The revocation of the excommunication to bring back in the fold the four bishops who seceded from the Vatican had nothing to do with Bishop Williamson’s denial of the Holocaust. Indeed, Bishop Williamson’s dispute of the scale of the atrocities committed by the Nazi gas chamber was a sideshow and a pretext to attack the pope and the church.

WASHINGTON – Richard Fehring is looking for a few good couples. More than a few, actually.

Three executives at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson have taken administrative leave while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigates a physician group and its financial relationship with the hospital.

The following is from a letter that was sent to Woodmont Academy parents:

WASHINGTON – A public park that displays a Ten Commandments monument is not legally required to accept another religious monument under the free speech clause of the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Feb. 25.