Pastor of the National Shrine of St. Alphonsus Liguori in Baltimore since 1998, Monsignor Bastress has ministered throughout the archdiocese since his May 19, 1951, ordination at the Baltimore Basilica.

With a degree in neuroscience and a job as a research assistant at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Oliver Avaritt had his life pretty well in order when he decided to hand it over to God and join the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph.

“We’ve got a consecrated altar now,” Father John Williamson, exclaimed to a parishioner greeting him in the narthex of the Church of the Ascension after a Mass May 28 in which the altar was blessed and the new sanctuary was dedicated.

While a church being replaced with a beerhall is sadly not uncommon in this day and age, the reverse is newsworthy.

How admired was Bishop William C. Newman? Applause cascaded through the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland May 29, as the casket bearing his body was wheeled down its main aisle, toward his final resting place in its crypt.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered May 29 at 11 a.m. at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland.

Bishop William C. Newman, a native son whose diverse service to the Archdiocese of Baltimore included being a parish priest, superintendent of schools and auxiliary bishop, died May 20 at Mercy Ridge Retirement Community in Timonium.

“It’s a great jewel in Hampden, it really is,” said parishioner Christine Barrasso of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish.

Officials of the Archdiocese of Baltimore reaffirmed that the church did not attempt to interfere in the investigation of the death of School Sister of Notre Dame Catherine Cesnik.

St. Benedict Parish in Baltimore is taking the Gospel to the airwaves.