Molly Ann Pais has it all. She is less than a month away from graduating from The John Carroll School in Bel Air, has been a star defensive player on one of Baltimore’s top girls high school lacrosse teams and boasts a 3.95 grade point average.

The newly ordained men represent the largest class of deacons for the Archdiocese of Baltimore in more than a decade. All married, they hail from as far west as Oakland in Garrett County and they include the president-CEO of a hospital, a scientist, a social worker and a biomedical research manager.

CUMBERLAND – In an April 28 town meeting marked by a combination of hopefulness, apprehension and anger, approximately 250 people gathered at St. Mary in Cumberland to ask questions about a proposal to create a new area parish out of five existing ones.

Jim and Pat McDonnell spent less than a minute in the presence of Pope John Paul II, but it was enough to change their lives.

“Since I have been working in multiple-parish ministry, I have been struck by the importance of working with a team of people – most of whom, of course, are lay Catholics,” Monsignor Hannon said. “We work together for the good of our parishes and for the good of the archdiocese.”

Days after Confederate forces in South Carolina captured Fort Sumter without any casualties, the first bloodshed in the Civil War happened in Baltimore on April 19, 1861.

Officials at Woodmont Academy, a once-bustling independent Catholic institution in Western Howard County, have decided to close the school later this spring due to declining enrollment.

Cumberland-area parishes currently have two funerals for every baptism. One third of registered parishioners are age 60 or older. The city’s population has declined from 30,000 in 1979 to 20,859 today, while the number of priests serving the five parishes has plummeted from 13 to four – the result of a clergy shortage.

With spring here, Kay Bowman’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love – not the romantic kind the poet Tennyson had in mind, but love for the children of her parish, St. Philip Neri in Linthicum Heights, and its school.

“It seems like our society and media want to push pro-lifers to the side and hope that we would shut our mouths and go away quietly,” said Birk, whose 6’4’’, 310-pound frame struck a distinct figure among the hundreds of marchers who filed through downtown streets. “Let’s not do that.”