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 aRead More

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...Read More

Although his 40-year career spanned the globe and taught this priest four languages, Monsignor John L. FitzGerald is back in his native town of Baltimore doing what he knows best: ministering to seafarers. As a child, he attended St. Mark, Catonsville. Once ordained, he was assigned first to St. Matthew, Northwood, then St. Peter the...Read More

When Bishop Denis J. Madden consecrated the white marble altar in the main church of Sacred Heart of Jesus July 21, the urban vicar became the second bishop to bless the ornate marble slab within the past 51 years.Read More

CUMBERLAND – Standing next to piles of neatly folded children’s shirts and dainty toddler’s dresses hanging overhead on hangers, Ellie Mantheiy was pleased with the quantity and quality of the apparel. “It’s mostly used clothing donated by parishioners,” said Ms. Mantheiy, coordinator of the children’s clothing outreach program at St. Mary, Cumberland. “Some of it...Read More

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...Read More

HAGERSTOWN – Balancing a shiny brass tuba on his thigh, Father Kevin Mueller took a deep breath and pumped a lungful of air into the slightly-dented instrument. At the priest’s command, the tuba sprang to life – filling his rectory office with deeply resonant, low-pitched oom-pahs that flew out of the big horn at a...Read More

After three years at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Middle River, Father T. Austin Murphy will be leaving July 1 to become the new chaplain of the Newman Center at Towson University. “As a priest you don’t forget your first parish,” said Father Murphy, 34, who is a graduate of University of Maryland Baltimore County....Read More