Twenty-seven years after his death, leaders of Bishop Walsh’s home parish are working to raise awareness about a man whose virtuous exploits seem less recognized with each passing decade.

On the same day Maryland lawmakers concluded a three-week special legislative session to address the state’s budget deficit Nov. 19, the leader of the Maryland Catholic Conference praised lawmakers for making the poor a priority in their planning.

When police arrested the serial rapist who brutally assaulted and murdered Shannon Schieber in 1998, the Schieber family faced unrelenting pressure to seek the death penalty.

Cardinal J. Francis Stafford made a stop in Emmitsburg before he attended Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien’s Oct. 1 installation ceremony at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland. There, he prayed for the new Baltimore archbishop at the tombs of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and Archbishop James R. Bayley – two New York natives who served in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Calling the death penalty nothing more than “legalized vengeance,” Sister Helen said the gift of being a Catholic is embracing the “seamless garment of life” – respecting the dignity of life from conception until natural death.