The Call ...
 

Candidates and sponsors stand in the sanctuary during the Call to Continuing Conversion at St. Patrick Church, Smithtown, March 4. Auxiliary Bishop John Dunne presided at the ceremony while Bishop William Murphy presided at a similar service at St. Agnes Cathedral, Rockville Centre, on the same day.
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Mother shares joys, blessings of raising a son with Down syndrome

By Pete Sheehan
Senior Reporter

Hicksville — When Robin Roach takes two-year-old Bryan shopping, people sometimes ask if her son has Down syndrome.
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Maria Regina Church, Seaford

Maria Regina was founded in 1955 to serve an expanding Catholic population on the south shore of eastern Nassau County. Parishioners initially worshipped in a small storefront before moving to a prefabricated building in 1957. The current church, designed in a contemporary Romanesque style, was dedicated in 1983. A grotto, gardens, statues and a recently installed St. Padre Pio shrine highlight the surrounding landscape.
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Tomorrow’s Hope Foundation will award more than $1 million in scholarships to help children attend Catholic elementary schools. For help navigating the scholarship application process, parents can attend one of five seminars scheduled around the diocese during the next week.
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Wantagh — She used to be a rock journalist, is obsessed with 1960s pop culture, and is a deputy news editor at the New York Daily News, but on Feb. 26, Dawn Eden came to speak to the young adults at Faith on Tap at the Wantagh Inn here about chastity.
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CYO coaches get coaching on sportsmanship

By Mary Gorry
Staff Reporter

Mineola — While trash talking, sideline coaching, and the overt questioning of game officials has become a staple not just of professional sports but of youth sports, the Catholic Youth Organization of Nassau and Suffolk counties takes a cue from the “Catholic” in its name to promote sportsmanship and spirituality among coaches, players, and parents.
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Chicago (CNS) — Those who practice “the finite and fallible craft” of medicine need to forgive themselves and learn to listen to their patients who have died, a Franciscan brother and physician told a group of Catholic ethicists March 1.
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Washington — As if we really needed them, here are still more reasons to be vigilant about television and its potential harmful effects on children.
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Bay Shore — Growing up in Ozone Park, Queens, Montfort Missionary Father George Werner considered different careers, from naval officer to architect.

He was also drawn to marriage and fatherhood, said Father Werner, superior of the Montfort community here, “but the priesthood was always something I thought about.” Fifty years ago, his years of deliberation culminated with his ordination as a Montfort priest.
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Administrators, board members and invited guests of St. Charles Hospital, Port Jefferson, kicked off the healthcare facility’s year-long centennial anniversary celebration Feb. 27 by riding a Long Island Rail Road train to commemorate the arrival of the hospital’s first patients 100 years ago. A reserved car on a regularly-scheduled diesel train transported the group from Huntington to Port Jefferson.
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Washington (CNS) — Ministering to women in Brazilian jails often involves just being there for the prisoners, said a U.S. missionary working with the Brazilian bishops’ Prison Pastoral Office.

Women prisoners feel abandoned and forgotten by society, said Heidi Cerneka, national women’s coordinator of the bishops’ office and a member of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners.
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Albany, N.Y. (CNS) — The executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference urged the state Legislature Feb. 28 to ban any form of “taxpayer-financed human cloning” and to reject Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s $2.1 billion Stem Cell and Innovation Fund as proposed, with its major emphasis on funding research on human embryonic stem cells.
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Sydney, Australia (CNS) — Cardinal George Pell of Sydney launched the 500-day countdown to World Youth Day 2008 and encouraged pilgrim groups to register online early for the event.
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Rome (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI’s letter to Chinese Catholics will be released at Easter time and will encourage the faithful, clarify issues of doctrine and call for full religious freedom, said China’s cardinal.
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