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SAN FRANCISCO – Look past the “inflammatory rhetoric” of the immigration debate to the root of the issue, urged Jesuit Father Stephen Privett, president of the University of San Francisco, in a Feb. 27 lecture at St. Rita Parish in Fairfax. “We will never resolve the issue of immigration if we do not address its underlying cause – poverty,” said Father Privett, the second speaker in a parish Lenten series based on Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical, “Populorum Progressio” (“The Progress of Peoples”).

Why Catholic? Journey through the catechism Mary, Mother of the Church Mary is called “Mother of the Church” because of her complete receptivity and adherence to God’s will, Jesus’ redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit. She is the church’s model of faith and charity. But who was this woman, really? She was a real woman, born in Nazareth, a poor town — so poor in the first century, that archeologists did not find mosaics or inscriptions. Mary probably grew up as an illiterate peasant in a 1-2 room house surrounded by similar houses. According to Sister Elizabeth Johnson, in her book “Truly Our Sister,” Mary and Joseph were devout Jews, for Jesus’ knowledge of the Torah was great, implying strongly that Mary and Joseph were people of deep faith who knew how to trust God in the midst of a world plagued by the violence of the Roman occupiers.

I just wanted to say thank you to Father Joseph Breighner for his spirituality columns over the years. He is the most insightful and helpful and down-to-earth writer I have read in a long time.

ANNAPOLIS – Sen. Alex X. Mooney knows he’s the man of the hour in the death penalty debate. In the deadlocked Maryland Senate judiciary committee, the parishioner of St. John the Evangelist in Frederick holds the deciding vote on whether legislation to abolish the death penalty will make it to the Senate floor. While the committee is expected to vote at the end of this week, Sen. Mooney still doesn’t know what his position will be. “I really don’t know where I’m going to come down,” said the Frederick County Republican, speaking to The Catholic Review during the March 12 Maryland March for Life. “I don’t consider it the same issue as abortion,” said Sen. Mooney, an abortion opponent. “On the death penalty, there’s no black and white.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Pope Benedict XVI’s top diplomat at the United Nations said the Vatican wants to normalize relations with China, which it sees as a major way of advancing religious freedom and fostering unity among Chinese Catholics. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s U.N. nuncio, expressed hope that a papal letter to Chinese Catholics to be released around Easter will be seen as proof of the Vatican’s good will and pave the way for Vatican talks with Chinese officials that could lead to diplomatic relations and resolution of differences over the church’s status in the Asian nation.

WASHINGTON – “School choice is becoming less and less a partisan issue,” Morgan Brown, an assistant deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, told a group of Catholic education leaders gathered in Washington for congressional advocacy days. The Bush administration “is the most pro-school-choice administration we’ve ever had at the federal level,” said Mr. Brown, who heads the Education Department’s Office of Innovation and Improvement.

The recent article, “Christian leaders call for change in Iraq war policies,” (CR, March 1) urging Maryland Christians to “travel to Washington March 16 and surround the White House” to protest Bush’s “immoral Iraq war policies” is amazingly ill-informed and politically charged.

PHILADELPHIA – Who’s that you’re seeing on YouTube? Yes, it is really Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia. The cardinal is providing video reflections for each Sunday of Lent, as well as for Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter on the free, video-sharing Web site, which allows users to upload, view and share video clips. Once on the site, www.youtube.com, visitors can easily find the reflections by typing “Cardinal Rigali” into the search area.