Saying the U.S. immigration system is broken, Baltimore City pastors called for its reform during a news conference Jan. 12 at St. Vincent de Paul parish in Baltimore.

Calling the death penalty “an expensive and utterly ineffective tool in deterring violent crime,” Gov. Martin J. O’Malley implored members of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee to allow his proposed capital punishment ban to reach the floor for a vote by the full legislative body.

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.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien was to preside over the opening session of the cause for sainthood of Holy Cross Father Patrick Peyton during the 12:10 p.m. Mass Nov. 20 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.

In her 14th season with the Notre Dame Preparatory School badminton program, Head Coach Therese Maguire knew her team of 25 was going to be strong – but strong enough to capture another championship?

MCHENRY – Tightly holding a large waterlogged sponge in his fist, 9-year-old Isaac Fike wound up like Orioles pitcher Erik Bedard and launched the soggy missile towards its target. As other children squealed with delight, Isaac hit his mark on his first try – smack in the face of Father Donald Parson, pastor of St. Peter the Apostle in Oakland. “If you want to go to heaven you’ll stop it,” shouted a smiling Father Parson, his soaked face poking through a cutout hole in a plywood angel figure topped with a halo. Father Michael Triplett, a newly ordained priest recently assigned to the parishes of Western Maryland, quickly jumped to Isaac’s defense.

Before they stepped into noisy M&T Bank Stadium for the AFC Divisional playoff game Jan. 15, some members of the Baltimore Ravens quietly gathered for morning prayer at their downtown hotel.

WASHINGTON – The priestly ministry of Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, named a cardinal Jan. 6 by Pope Benedict XVI, has been marked by frequent assignments, so that he rarely stays in one place very long. And even when he is ensconced somewhere for a while, he gets to moving.

Two graduates of the University of Maryland College Park took a step closer to becoming Dominican priests after professing their solemn vows late in the summer of 2011 at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.

Paulist Father James McCabe, former director of the Family Life Center in Baltimore and a longtime columnist for The Catholic Review, died Dec. 25, 2011 in Toronto. He was 81 and had been battling cancer.