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CHICAGO – The National Catholic AIDS Network, which recently formed a partnership with Loyola University Chicago, has announced that it will close following its 20th annual AIDS ministry conference this summer. The decision comes at a time when more and more people in the United States are living with HIV or AIDS, as the numbers of new infections are holding steady or rising and the death rate has gone down. The number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States is now estimated to be more than a million.

St. John Regional Catholic School, Frederick, recently spent a busy Monday reaching out to others…

Most adult Catholics get no religious instruction outside the weekend homilies, a fact that underscores the importance of your article on the need for “solid preaching not fluff” (CR, Feb. 1). I would like to add to Archbishop Dolan’s comments about the epidemic of “sanitized, feel-good, boutique, therapeutic spirituality that makes no demands, calls for no sacrifice…but only soothes and affirms.”

DUBUQUE, Iowa – The “green” efforts of students, teachers and staff at Resurrection Elementary School in Dubuque have paid off. It is the first parochial school to receive the Green Vision Education Award from the Dubuque Metropolitan Area Solid Waste Agency. It was honored for a recycling program. During ceremonies Jan. 29 in the gym, members of the solid waste agency presented the school with the Green Vision flag to hang outside the school, and a banner to display inside the building.

A funeral Mass was offered Jan. 6 at St. Francis of Assisi in Nanticoke, Penn., for Father James Schappert, S.S.J.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI will lead a full slate of Holy Week and Easter liturgies in Rome and at the Vatican, highlighting a busy papal schedule this spring. The Vatican announced Feb. 1 that the pope would preside over eight major events in the week leading up to Easter. The liturgies include a Mass April 2 commemorating the second anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s death. The pope’s Holy Week activities will begin with a procession and Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday, April 1.

Eric Thompson, a fourth grader at St. John the Evangelist School, Severna Park, won the school-level competition of the 19th annual National Geographic Bee Jan. 5 and a chance to win a $25,000 college scholarship. Students in grades 4-8 answered oral questions about geography in the first round. The runner up was Grant Murray, a fifth grader at St. John. This is the first time in the history of this competition at St. John’s that a fourth grade student has won the right to progress to the next level.

The tribute to Teddy Kollek by George Weigel (CR, Jan. 18) was for a remarkable man who participated in the birth of Israel. Mr. Weigel, in his glowing tribute to Mayor Kollek, refers to the intifada and how it made cooperation with the Palestinians impossible. That remark reminds us that the struggle in the Middle East and for Jerusalem is one driven by two compelling narratives. Teddy Kollek represents one – the one Americans know the most about. It is the narrative of the Holocaust and the struggle of the Jews for a homeland. The other is the Palestinian narrative of the Nakbah, the Arab word for catastrophe, inflicted on the Palestinian people in 1948 and again in 1967.