Loyola University Maryland received its third multi-million-dollar gift in the past two months as it announced Jan. 21 that it received a $12 million commitment from Bill and Susan S. Bloomfield. 

It isn’t a secret that the student body at St. Mark School in Catonsville is a family affair, with classrooms filled with siblings and cousins, as well as faculty members’ children, nieces and nephews. Having four teams of mothers and daughters working at the school, however, is a bit unusual.

Now in its 13th year, the annual walk is sponsored by St. Bernardine and Historic St. Peter Claver in memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Monsignor Edward Michael Miller, a former St. Bernardine pastor who died in December 2013 while preparing for Sunday Mass.

Deacon Greg Kandra is a writer, retreat leader, blogger and author. Catholic Review Editor Christopher Gunty chatted with Deacon Kandra about his most recent book, “Peace Be with All of You: The Mission and Message of Pope Leo XIV,” from Word Among Us.

More than two dozen potential candidates for the seminary had a weekend-long opportunity Jan. 9-11 in a supportive group setting to consider their vocational calling at the archdiocese’s annual men’s discernment retreat.

Sulpician Father Shawn D. Gould has been named by his society’s provincial council as the next president-rector of St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Roland Park, effective July 1. 

Catholic Review Media will coordinate a pilgrimage to Fatima, Lourdes and Barcelona Oct. 25-Nov. 4 to see apparition sites in Portugal and France, as well as Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona.

Sister Christina Christie, a former Anglican nun who played a pivotal role in guiding her Catonsville-based women’s religious community into full communion with the Catholic Church, died Dec. 5. She was 94 and had been a member of the Society of All Saints Sisters of the Poor for 59 years.

Pope Leo XIV canonized both St. Carlo and St. Pier Giorgio Frassati Sept. 7. St. Carlo died at 15 years old in 2006 after battling leukemia. He became known as the first saint of the digital age, using the internet to share stories of eucharistic miracles around the world.

Speaking to a crowd of about 300 Jan. 9 at St. Louis in Clarksville, part of a pastorate with St. Francis of Assisi in Fulton, George Weigel urged Catholics to resist snap judgments about the new pope and instead understand the complex moment he has inherited.