VATICAN CITY – News that U.S. President Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was met with high hopes from the Vatican spokesman.

When 87-year-old Alice Jadwigia Armstrong looked up from her hospital bed and saw the smiling face of Sister Lourdes Miranda, she was visibly buoyed by the nun’s presence. Clasping the hand of the Little Sister of the Poor, the white-haired woman seemed transported to the security of her youth.

A summer archeological dig near St. Joseph in Cockeysville unearthed brown broken bottles and tea cups, coins, a beer token, buttons and children’s toys – clues into the daily life of Irish immigrants who manned area limestone quarries and worshipped at St. Joseph beginning in the mid-19th century.

On his first day as pastor of the Shrine of St. Alphonsus in Baltimore, Monsignor Arthur Bastress walked down the historic church’s long aisles and knew immediately that his new assignment was going to be something special.

Two elementary Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Baltimore have been named Blue Ribbon Schools by the U.S. Department of Education.

A spiritual journey that began seven years ago ended in the sanctuary of a Catonsville convent Sept. 3 when 10 Episcopal nuns and their priest chaplain were received into full communion with the Catholic Church.

“There he was standing with his arms crossed and nodding approvingly,” the priest said. “It shocked me and I said something like, “Oh good Jesus! What the heaven are you doing here?’”

After seven years of prayer and discernment, a community of Episcopal nuns and their chaplain will be received into the Roman Catholic Church during a Sept. 3 Mass celebrated by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore prayed for peace in Baltimore City when summer began.

Father Richard T. Lawrence always looked at the many homeless living on St. Vincent de Paul’s parish park as people rather than a nuisance.