City pastors who worked with Mayor Sheila Dixon on issues ranging from homelessness to immigration gave the outgoing mayor generally high marks for her performance in office. Yet, as the 56-year-old mayor prepares to step down Feb. 4 as part of a plea deal in a corruption case, priests throughout the city expressed disappointment in her behavior.

Bishop John H. Ricard, SSJ, bishop of Penacola-Tallahassee, Fla., and former auxiliary bishop of Baltimore, was admitted to the hospital recently with a stroke. The following information was provided by the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee:

As pallbearers slowly guided Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder’s casket out of Immaculate Conception Church in Towson following his Dec. 12 funeral Mass, approximately 120 priests and deacons united their voices in a final tribute to their brother clergyman. A solemn church bell tolled every few seconds while the white-robed men chanted “Salve Regina” in Latin […]

Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder died Dec. 4, days after his retirement as pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Towson.

Jim Burke walked through a foot of snow down York Road to be at the first Mass celebrated at St. Pius X, Rodgers Forge, in 1958.

Christopher J. Coffland, a Baltimore native, was killed by a roadside bomb Nov. 13 in the Wardak province of Afghanistan. The Army reservist, who had joined the military a month before he reached the enlistment age limit of 42, had been in Afghanistan for two weeks working as an intelligence specialist.

When Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien referred to the rector of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen as “the indomitable, irrepressible Monsignor Robert Armstrong,” hundreds of parishioners interrupted the archbishop’s Nov. 15 cathedral homily with applause.

St. Louis in Clarksville is mourning the loss of John Alexander Evans, a 19-year-old parishioner who died Nov. 7 after completing a 10-mile road march at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington.

A bill that would impose new requirements on pro-life pregnancy centers in the city took a step closer to becoming law when the Baltimore City Council passed the measure 12-3 in a preliminary vote Nov. 16. Bill 09-0406 now faces a final vote after Thanksgiving and, if approved, will head to Mayor Sheila Dixon.

Dr. Ronald J. Valenti is stepping down as superintendent of Catholic schools after nearly 20 years of service in the Division of Schools. He plans to pursue other opportunities in the field of education and will mark his last day as superintendent June 30, 2010.