Calling the death penalty “an expensive and utterly ineffective tool in deterring violent crime,” Gov. Martin J. O’Malley implored members of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee to allow his proposed capital punishment ban to reach the floor for a vote by the full legislative body.

As a resident on a limited income at Catholic Charities’ Basilica Place Apartments Senior Housing facility in Baltimore, 73-year-old Herb Johnson doesn’t have a lot of change to spare.

He once was lost but now is found. The plastic baby Jesus figure that vandals ripped from the outdoor manger of a Timonium Nativity scene last January has been recovered and returned to Gil and Loretta Hoffman.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien challenged Baltimore pilgrims at World Youth Day to be a light of information when they return from Sydney, Australia.

A Baltimore Catholic parishioner and an Owings Mills Jewish cantor will be honored by the Steven Kaufman AIDS Outreach Project April 10 during an interfaith Seder tribute to those touched by HIV.

Expect more people in the pews in 2011, thanks to the base realignment and closure (BRAC) initiative, which will bring an estimated 28,176 new households to Maryland. Business managers from Baltimore-area parishes and schools filled an Archdiocesan workshop Oct. 18 that featured speakers from Harford, Baltimore a

Administrators of Beans and Bread and opponents of a $4.5 million renovation and expansion to its resource center agree that clients should wait for services inside the facility, rather than on the street.

When amateur actor and former Benedictine priest Benet Hanlon began working in a Fells Point theater in the late 1970s, he noticed a number of homeless men along the then-scrappy waterfront streets, got to know several of them and eventually rented a small row house on Aliceanna Street in 1977 in an effort to feed them.

While parishioners at Towson’s Immaculate Conception were coming to terms with his retirement announcement in mid-November, Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder was talking about a greater transition.

As Baltimore’s Franciscan Center celebrated its 40th anniversary with a block party, Sept. 10, volunteer Ellen Daniels stood in the hubbub and spoke about how the nonprofit organization was able to help her.