One hundred years ago on St. Valentine’s Day, George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr. began his meteoric rise in professional baseball when he signed a contract with the minor league Baltimore Orioles.

For years, a tattered and taped copy of the Aug. 30, 1902, issue of The Catholic Mirror has jockeyed for attention on my sometimes-cluttered desk at the Catholic Review.

Father Dale Picarella had just finished greeting a mob of parishioners at the end of Mass when I approached him in the sacristy with a special request. Would he visit my mother at Bayview Medical Center in East Baltimore as she was recovering from cancer surgery?

My brother was in line at a local supermarket when he observed a young woman strike up a conversation with an apparent longtime friend. Showing off her slightly protruding belly, the younger woman announced that she was pregnant.

Mercy Sister Lois Mueller was a bundle of energy when I first met her at The Villa retirement home in Baltimore three years ago. I was visiting for a story I was writing about how retired nuns kept in shape by playing bowling and other Nintendo Wii video games donated by students of St. Joseph School in Cockeysville.

ROME – I wasn’t planning on ascending 28 marble steps on my knees, but as I watched white-haired ladies, young couples and people of all nationalities struggle to pull themselves up the ancient walkway where Jesus is believed to have tread, I felt compelled to do the same.