Check out the most-read local stories and commentaries on CatholicReview.org for 2024.

As we come to the end of 2024, Catholic Review Editor Christopher Gunty sits down with Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori to look at the year that is ending, which included the World Synod of Bishops, lots of activity around the Seek the City to Come initiative that reshapes ministry in Baltimore City with an emphasis on evangelizing communities, the upsurge in vocations and more. Archbishop Lori also looks ahead to 2025 and the celebration of the Jubilee Year of Hope.

Just five days after Pope Francis opened the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and inaugurated a yearlong Jubilee of Hope, Archbishop William E. Lori welcomed the Holy Year locally with a Mass at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland Dec. 29.

The School Sisters of Notre Dame recently announced that they are making progress on the sale of the buildings that housed the Institute of Notre Dame in Baltimore, while also emphasizing their mission to continue to minister to the neighborhood surrounding the Aisquith Street property.

Loyola University Maryland announced that its Simon Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship accepted 11 new ventures for the center’s 2024-25 Baltipreneurs Accelerator.

The Towson University graduate, 62, found his calling when he established the St. Paul Grassroots and Cold Weather Shelter ministries.

A coalition of public, private and faith-based partners plans to gather for a one-hour prayer vigil Dec. 30 at 5:30 p.m. to remember the lives lost to homicide this year and plead for an end to violence in Baltimore City. 

Christmas Day will be especially poignant for Father William A. Au, pastor of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart. 

Father Demek was inspired to become a priest by a seminarian from his home parish, Holy Cross in South Baltimore. “My father ran the altar servers when I was a kid back in the ’50s and so I was an altar server from second grade on.” He was an altar server at the seminarian’s first Mass after ordination.

Archbishop William E. Lori will mark the beginning of the Jubilee Year 2025 in the Archdiocese of Baltimore with a Mass at Cathedral of Mary of Our Queen in Homeland Dec. 29 at 11 a.m.