And that has made all the difference People often paint a bleak picture of Baltimore City. And, quite frankly, there are plenty of sad and disturbing stories to go around. Take my friend, who worked as a social worker for Baltimore City children in foster care. She would conduct home visits with parents interested in getting their children back. She spoke of apartments crawling with cockroaches, overflowing toilets not even hooked up, pet feces littering the floor and cases where parents admitted to not taking their medication. My friend would help these individuals outline the steps they would need to take to get their children back. In the midst of this, she had foster children tell her they had been abused or went without food. But even in the bleakest of situations, light shines through. My friend treasures the hand-drawn cards from foster children she helped. One such light in Baltimore City is Cristo Rey Jesuit High School on Chester Street in Fells Point. I have previously written about Cristo Rey student Arthur Williams. In 2009, he was one of two sophomores chosen to meet personally with Bill Cosby. When asked if this was one of the highlights of his life, the then 15-year-old responded, “No.” Taken aback, I remember asking, “Well then what is?” “Seeing my mother get clean,” he responded. “Meeting Bill Cosby was a great opportunity and affected my life, but seeing my mother stop using was much more crucial.” Arthur, a resident of Boys Hope Girls Hope in Baltimore, is an example of what is possible with inner determination coupled with a quality education and a supportive home environment. According to the Boys Hope Girls Hope website (bhghbaltimore.org), Arthur is now a Cristo Rey senior who has a corporate internship with Under Armour and plans to apply to Loyola University, Gettysburg and Moravian College. In a story which will run March 17 in The Catholic Review, writer Matt Palmer interviewed another Cristo Rey senior, Chris Ellis. Cornelia Ellis, Chris’ adoptive mother, spoke of how proud she is of her son, but fretted that she didn’t make enough money to give her son the education and things he deserves. She said her son simply tells her, “I’m going to do the best I can with what I got.” “I’ve grown as a person here, both mentally and physically,” Chris said of Cristo Rey. “I’m different now.” These young men were on a path that led them to places like Cristo Rey and Boys Hope Girls Hope. It’s this difference that helps shine a light on Baltimore. Chris Ellis, a senior at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School and his mother Cornelia, attend the school’s “100 days until graduation” meeting March 8. Loyola Blakefield student loses battle with leukemia Loyola Blakefield freshman Joseph T. Gorman died March 9 after two years of battling leukemia. Gorman was a student at Loyola for four years and had just turned 15. He had recently been informed that he was going to receive the “Childrens’ Hope Medal of Honor” presented by Heroes of Hope, a program under the World Health Foundation. He inspired a bone marrow drive that resulted in the registration of nearly 900 new donors. Gorman himself was the recipient of a bone marrow transplant. Damage keeps Japanese church officials from assessing needs TOKYO – Damage from a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and ensuing tsunamis were preventing church officials in Japan from assessing needs as tsunami warnings were issued for 50 other countries. Yasufumi Matsukuma, a staffer at the Japanese bishops’ conference, told the Asian church news agency UCA News that most staffers would remain in the offices overnight because of suspended rail service and continuous aftershocks. “In Tokyo, telephone lines are so busy that I cannot contact diocesan chancellor offices in Japan. Aftershocks have followed. The tsunamis are terrible and we cannot get any information concerning the church yet,” he said. Disruption of telecommunications has made it impossible for the conference’s general secretariat to contact Sendai, near the quake’s epicenter, and neighboring dioceses, he added. Television and web video showed cars, ships and even buildings being swept away by a wall of water hitting Sendai, and CNN reported police discovered at least 200-300 bodies in the city. Daisuke Narui, executive director of Caritas Japan, said in a statement: “We are still collecting information at this point, but currently we are not able to communicate on the phone. Cell phones are also out of service.” A spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services said the agency was on high alert in many countries in Asia, including the Philippines and Caritas Oceania, which is active in many islands in the Pacific. This earthquake is the strongest since a magnitude 9.1 quake struck off Indonesia in December 2004. The quake and the tsunamis that followed left about 220,000 people dead or missing in more than a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean. “We know from 2004 the devastating impact that these tsunamis can have,” said Sean Callahan, CRS executive vice president for overseas operations. “As with all such disasters, CRS will help people recover from the emergency and stand with them as they recover.” Pope accepts resignation of Bishop Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee WASHINGTON – Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., and appointed Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski to be the diocese’s apostolic administrator until the installation of a new bishop. The resignation and appointment were announced March 11 in Washington by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States. Bishop Ricard, 71, retired for health reasons. In 2009, he suffered a stroke and was hospitalized. He has undergone subsequent surgeries. He is four years younger than the age at which bishops are required by canon law to turn in their resignations to the pope. Bishop Ricard, a native of Baton Rouge, La., was named bishop of the Pensacola- Tallahassee Diocese in 1997 and previously served as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. On the national level, he has been chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee on the Church in Africa and has served on the bishops’ international justice and peace committee and the national collections committee. In retirement he will be in residence in Pensacola. Curley names new principal Conventual Franciscan Father Joseph Benicewicz, president of Baltimore’s Archbishop Curley High School, announced the appointment of Philip Piercy as principal, effective July 1. Piercy has been Curley’s assistant principal of academics for five years. A parishioner of St. Francis de Sales in Abingdon, he previously was a social studies teacher and dean of students at The John Carroll School in Bel Air. Piercy holds a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Elizabethtown College and a master’s degree in administration and supervision from Loyola University Maryland. He is currently a doctoral candidate in educational leadership at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. “During the course of this year,” Father Benicewicz said, “I have been very impressed with Mr. Piercy’s intellectual capabilities, dedication to the mission of Curley and the value of Catholic education, and his desire to help Curley continue to meet the challenges we face as a school.” Piercy succeeds Barry Brownlee, who is retiring after 10 years as principal and a total of 22 on the Curley faculty. Curley also announced that vice president for finance Joseph DellaMonica, who has been with the school for 43 of its 50 years, will retire this summer. Father Beniciewicz noted that Brownlee and DellaMonica delayed their retirement plans in order to assist his transition to the presidency of the school. Slideshow of Deacon Tanghe’s ordination Our readers at The Catholic Review are pretty amazing. They’re everywhere and use their cameras to capture some touching, incredible moments. Last week’s ordination of transitional Deacon Warren Tanghe is a perfect example. Kitt O’Brien and Carrie Joneckis, both of St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park, were snapping away and offered to share some of what they were able to get. Unfortunately, all the photos couldn’t get in the March 3 edition of the paper. But, they’re embedded below in a video. Please enjoy and feel free to share your photos with me at [email protected] New Bible features C.S. Lewis There’s a new Bible on the market from HarperOne that features annotations taken from the spiritual writings of C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest Christian writers of all time best known for his “Chronicles of Narnia.” The newly released “C.S. Lewis Bible” incorporates passages from some of Lewis’s greatest works, including “Mere Christianity,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “The Great Divorce,” “The Problem of Pain,” “Miracles” and “A Grief Observed.” The New York Times has the story: (Lewis’) most famous apologetic is “Mere Christianity,” based on radio talks given during World War II. That book has helped convert Christians as dissimilar as the Watergate felon Charles W. Colson and the National Institutes of Health director, Francis S. Collins. In “Mere Christianity,” Lewis writes of Jesus: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.” This famous passage does not, on a second read, make much sense.