News

Forty-eight years old seems too young to die. The hole a man’s death leaves in his family never seems to shrink as they forge ahead without him.

For the past 51 years as a priest, Father John Bauer, C.Ss.R., has looked forward to celebrating Midnight Mass on Christmas, and the most peaceful one for this Highlandtown native was in the middle of a war zone.

He once was lost but now is found. The plastic baby Jesus figure that vandals ripped from the outdoor manger of a Timonium Nativity scene last January has been recovered and returned to Gil and Loretta Hoffman.

Walking along the Johnston Square streets that surround St. Frances Academy in a forgotten corner of East Baltimore, Tom Nealis passed vacant lots overrun with weeds and boarded-up row houses tagged with graffiti.

Expect more people in the pews in 2011, thanks to the base realignment and closure (BRAC) initiative, which will bring an estimated 28,176 new households to Maryland. Business managers from Baltimore-area parishes and schools filled an Archdiocesan workshop Oct. 18 that featured speakers from Harford, Baltimore a