GLEN BURNIE – After a week of classroom stress and social angst, many high schoolers use Friday nights to blow off steam at parties.

After her brother became Baltimore’s 21st murder victim of 2007, Erricka Bridgeford couldn’t wait for the police to find the person who did it. Bridgeford dreamed of spitting in the murderer’s face. Male relatives thought of even more violent ways of exacting vengeance, she said.

Loyola Blakefield freshman Joseph T. Gorman died March 9 after two years of battling leukemia.

Growing up in New York, Redemptorist Father John Murray loved marching with his father in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Now that he uses a wheelchair, Father Murray is about to promote the Saint of Ireland in a way that may prove more powerful than anything he could have done on foot in a parade.

Two members of a family whose son was killed in Iraq had different reactions to a March 2 Supreme Court decision upholding the First Amendment rights of members of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest outside the 2006 funeral of Matthew Snyder at St. John Parish in Westminster.

“You have been and continue to be a star,” Archbishop Sambi said, “a light of hope, not only for the church, but also for the community at large.”

Monsignor Martin R. Strempeck, a much-loved priest and former pastor who devoted much of his ministry to comforting others, died Feb. 8. Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien offered a funeral Mass Feb. 14 at St. Margaret in Bel, the parish where 82-year-old MonsignorStrempeck had retired but remained active in ministry until three months before his death.

U.S. District Court Judge Marvin J. Garbis ruled Jan. 28 in Baltimore that it is unconstitutional to require pro-life pregnancy centers to post signs with language mandated by the government.

Leaders of the Redemptorists and the Archdiocese of Baltimore are considering a plan to close 159-year-old St. Michael in Fells Point and relocate parishioners to Sacred Heart of Jesus in Highlandtown.

WESTMINSTER – As the Supreme Court considers a high-profile case involving the Westboro Baptist Church, much media attention has focused on what the Kansas church members did outside St. John parish during Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder’s 2006 funeral.