Sydney Cardinal George Pell and Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Fisher, the World Youth Day coordinator, launched the first exclusive World Youth Day social networking Web site to connect pilgrims around the globe.

Lunchtime conversations could get pretty crazy when we were feeling a little theological. We wanted to know everything. My Jewish friends would ask about how the Trinity could still be one God. My Protestant friends would ask why Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist when their denominations saw it more as a memorial. My atheist friends would ask me how I could believe at all. I'd also ask them questions.

When a friend suggested to Patty Redpath last year that she look into Habitat for Humanity as a possible way for the single mother of seven to move her family out of their double-wide mobile home into a house, Redpath's first thought was her income might make her ineligible. After all, with her master's degree and full-time employment as a county school social worker, the 48-year-old makes a decent living.

St. Francis Hospital Auxiliary Volunteers were honored June 23 at a recognition dinner at which volunteers by increments of 100 hours of service were given special recognition. In 2007 auxiliary volunteers logged 5,215 hours of service, and junior volunteers logged 771 hours.

Sister M. Rosann Monyak, OSF, age 84, of the Hospital Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, died June 25 at St. Francis Convent, Springfield.

Terry Farmer, owner of Terry Farmer Photography, Inc. in Springfield, spent nine days in Santa Cruz, Bolivia this spring, capturing life-changing transformations made possible through Operation Smile. Operation Smile is a worldwide medical charity dedicated to helping children and young adults born with cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities.

I have been busy settling in for my new assignment at Our Lady of Lourdes in Decatur. Last week, the rector of Kenrick Seminary, which I attended, paid me a visit since he had been unable to attend my ordination.

When walking around our city we can't help running into street people asking for money. I want to help them, but I believe that Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army know who is deserving and what's best for them. I pray for the homeless and hungry here in the U.S. and around the world. I strongly want to help them, but are we doing these folks a disservice by not steering them to groups than can help them a lifetime, instead of our helping them a day?

Pope Benedict XVI is known to the world as the successor of St. Peter, the first pope. But for the next 12 months he'll be turning the spotlight on St. Paul, the church's archetypal missionary.

During the darkest hours of the exile Deutero-Isaiah offered this message to the people Israel. Many of them no doubt had lost faith in Yahweh whom they probably now regarded as powerless. Reaching back to the creation accounts from Genesis, the prophet portrays the "Word of God" here as powerful, fruitful, fertile, transformative and able to bring hope and new life to the forlorn people in exile.