Father Brian Rafferty has a motor that won’t stop and the arms to match.

It’s the Bible vs. the government for St. Vincent de Paul, Baltimore, pastor Father Richard T. Lawrence.

Father Kevin W. Brooksbank, a 35-year-old associate pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary in Baynesville, died May 25 at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson after battling a viral infection and kidney failure.

The future fire chief said he fell in love with the Catholic Church, attracted by the richness of the liturgy and the solid structure of the church. There was a sense of authenticity he longed for, he said.

Without uttering a word, nine teens from Central Maryland conveyed their love for their church using signs and gestures during a first-ever archdiocesan confirmation liturgy for the deaf community May 13.

“Holy Communion makes you feel better that you have received Jesus,” he explained. “I’m so glad I’m able to receive it. It gives me strength.”

The new houses are part of a 122-home development resulting from a partnership between TRF Development Partners and Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD). Seventy-five of the homes will be built from scratch, with the remaining 47 to be rehabbed.

Paul McMullen, a Baltimore native with four decades of experience in the newspaper business, has been appointed managing editor of The Catholic Review.

She has been the president and principal of Baltimore’s Mercy High School for 31 years, and may have held such a position longer than anyone else in Catholic secondary education. But, Sister Carol Wheeler, R.S.M., somehow retains the creative energy, freshness and vision she had when she came to the newly opened Mercy as a teacher in 1961 and when she became principal in 1977.

One day after attending an April 24 White House summit on preventing faith-based schools from closing in the inner-city, Dr. Ronald J. Valenti, Baltimore superintendent of Catholic schools, welcomed a renewed proposal from President George W. Bush to establish a “Pell Grant for Kids.”