Father Bernard S. Bak, one of the first permanent deacons ordained in the United States who later became a priest for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, died in his Dundalk home June 8. He was 85. A funeral Mass was offered June 11 at St. Casimir in Canton, the parish in which Father Bak grew up and where he served as a deacon after his 1971 ordination. Father Bak also served as a deacon at Christ the King in Dundalk. After his wife of 35 years, Antoinette Stefanowicz, died in 1984, Father Bak petitioned the archdiocese to become a priest. He studied at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Roland Park and was ordained a priest in 1988.

As Father Edward M. Miller prepares the homily he will deliver at the May 10 funeral Mass for his friend of 40 years – Father John Anthony Delclos – the pastor of St. Bernardine, Baltimore, reflects on how the 67-year-old retired priest was able to take the complexity out of religion and make it easy for the faithful to comprehend.

Peter Boyle, who was once a Christian Brother before he pursued a career in acting, died Dec. 12 at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Boyle, 71, had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease.

Hundreds of people marched through the troubled, poverty-stricken streets of west Baltimore Dec. 9 to celebrate the life of controversial Catholic peace activist Philip Francis Berrigan.