SAO PAULO, Brazil – Pope Benedict XVI addressed a stadium full of enthusiastic Brazilian young people, telling them that a life lived without moral responsibility is a life wasted. At a rally May 10 in Sao Paulo, the pope warned against sexual infidelity, drug use and unethical shortcuts to success and said the desire to...Read More

SAO PAULO, Brazil – Pope Benedict XVI canonized Brazil’s first native-born saint, an 18th-century Franciscan friar renowned for his charity to the poor and his legacy of miraculous healings. At an outdoor Mass May 11, the pope read a decree proclaiming sainthood for Father Antonio Galvao, prompting a surge of applause among the hundreds of...Read More

Winners of the fifth grade prayer card contest sponsored by the Serra Club of Baltimore and the Archdiocese of Baltimore Vocation Office have been announced.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

W. King Pound, a parishioner of St. William of York in Baltimore who obtained national ads for Catholic newspapers and magazines during most of his 57-year career in advertising, died May 8 at his home in Baltimore. He was 82. A memorial service was to take place May 15 at Loudon Park cemetery in Baltimore,...Read More

PARIS – When Nicolas Sarkozy is inaugurated as the president of France May 16, Catholics in the country will have some reasons to celebrate and some reasons to be wary. Sarkozy, the 52-year-old head of the Union for a Popular Movement political party, defeated Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal in the French elections May 6,...Read More

VATICAN CITY – If the world is to help stop the spread of nuclear weapons, nations must take positive steps toward nuclear disarmament, a Vatican official said. Nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation “are interdependent and mutually reinforcing,” said Monsignor Michael W. Banach, the Vatican’s representative to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization....Read More

WASHINGTON – The International Executive Committee of Amnesty International has declared that a woman should have full, legal access to abortion in cases of rape or incest or if her life or health is at grave risk. The new policy calls for eliminating criminal penalties for anyone who provides an abortion or obtains one. Last...Read More