Eric Greene knows three classmates from his Catholic elementary school who have died. Others he knows from his old neighborhood are strung out on drugs or in jail.

Parishioners of St. Leo in Little Italy were informed Dec. 28 that Michael Salerno, formerly their Pallottine pastor, admitted to the sexual abuse of a minor in the 1970s and that his faculties to function as a priest have been permanently revoked.

“Malik is the child of my heart,” Ms. Brogden, 44, said. “He may not be the child of my womb, but he’s the child of my heart. And he knows it.”

When 12-year-old Thomas Foley opened a shoebox in his Aunt Mame’s closet more than 65 years ago, he unwittingly uncovered the building blocks for a remarkable story of faith, courage and determination.

Father Robert “Rocky” Kearns, a pioneering Josephite priest, pastor and superior general who was active in the social justice movement, died in an Alabama hospital Dec. 6 from complications of cancer. He was 72.

It looks more than a little bit like a Picasso, the nun’s painting of St. Ambrose baptizing St. Augustine.

As Melissa Brent crept closer to the 7-foot, 850-pound bronze statue, not even a steady late-November rain could dampen her joy.

From a parish school in South Philadelphia to the Catoctin Mountains, Phelan spent 65 years on campuses affiliated with the church.

“It looks like bread, but it really is Jesus,” explained Father Erik Arnold, pastor of the Ellicott City parish, reminding the young onlookers that Christ is truly present in body, blood, soul and divinity through the Blessed Sacrament.

Father Patrick Peach is turning in his black clerics and white collar for a brown tunic.