Baltimore Archdiocese

The Rev. Wayne George Funk, the pastor of a Roman Catholic church in Frederick who had earlier served in the Northwood section of Northeast Baltimore, died of cancer Saturday at Frederick Memorial Hospital. He was 70. Born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, he attended St. Dominic's Parochial School and at the end of eighth-grade entered the seminary at the old St. Charles College in Catonsville. He completed four years of high school and two years of college there. According to his biography, in the fall of 1957 he was assigned to the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where he received a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1959 and a licentiate in sacred theology in 1963, both degrees granted by the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Sister Mary Paul Lee, a retired educator and treasurer of her Roman Catholic religious order, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 1 at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. She was 75 and lived at her order's Arbutus motherhouse. The granddaughter of a slave owned by Jesuit priests at Georgetown University, she was born Susan Grace Lee in Philadelphia. She related her experiences there as a black high school basketball player on a predominantly white team in a 2002 issue of U.S. Catholic.

In a sign of the worsening shortage of Catholic priests in the United States, Cardinal William H. Keeler has chosen a former health-care executive as the first layperson to lead a Baltimore-area parish. The appointment of Anne Buening to lead St. Clement I in Lansdowne marks the first time a married lay woman will lead a parish in the Baltimore Archdiocese. "I'm humbled by the honor and responsibility to be the servant leader of this community," said Buening, 50, who has worked full time on the ministerial staff of St. Louis Catholic Church in Clarksville since 1998.

Anthony Leon Horka, a retired director of fiscal management and services for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, died of heart failure Tuesday at Keswick Multi-Care Center in Roland Park. He was 87. A resident of Northwood since 1953, Mr. Horka was born in Baltimore and grew up in Curtis Bay. He was a graduate of St. Charles Seminary in Catonsville and attended Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he earned a certificate to teach voice in 1938. He directed a number of church choirs in greater Baltimore.

A priest ousted from his Roman Catholic church in Connecticut because he was found to have sexually abused boys while working as a pastor in Baltimore was never charged here with a crime, even though he confessed, a police report shows. The report from 1987 says that the Rev. Robert Victor Newman, who was expelled from his New Haven church over the weekend, was granted "exceptional clearance" by the Baltimore state's attorney's office despite having admitted to police and prosecutors that he fondled a 14-year-old boy. As a condition of the "exceptional" arrangement, Newman was to continue treatment in a psychiatric hospital rather than face prosecution, the report said.

The pastor of a Roman Catholic church in New Haven, Conn., has resigned after church officials discovered that he had been accused of sexually abusing boys in the 1980s while working as a priest in Baltimore. The Archdiocese of Hartford announced last night that it confronted the Rev. Robert Newman after receiving word last month from the Archdiocese of Baltimore that Newman had been expelled from a northeast city church and investigated by state prosecutors in 1987 over the abuse allegations.

They've tried prayer and persuasion. They've printed glossy brochures and posters. They've even laced up sneakers and gone on a basketball road show to Catholic parishes - anything to recruit new priests. And now, they're going to the tape. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore began airing a 30-second television advertisement yesterday in the hopes of recruiting men who would make good priests. The ad, which will air for the next two weeks on WJZ-TV, is part of a multipronged effort to reverse declining seminary enrollment that is creating a shortage of priests, not just in Baltimore but in practically every diocese in the country.

Sharonne Jackson-Little, a 37-year-old wife and mother of two, spends most of her time taking care of other people. After working a midnight-to-8 a.m. shift at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, she rushes home to Baltimore to take her children to school and tend her bedridden mother-in-law.For Easter, however, she's doing something for herself. She's becoming a Catholic. At a candlelight Easter Vigil ceremony last night, she was baptized. Today, she will receive her first Communion.While Easter is among the most sacred of holidays for Christians, marking the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, it is especially significant for the Roman Catholic Church because the church initiates hundreds of thousands of new followers around the world.

For the past six years, Sister Mary Monaghan has pulled lunch duty and monitored the halls as principal of St. Jane Frances School in Riviera Beach.On June 14, she will walk the halls for what might be her final time as principal. She is leaving to return to the classroom, this time as a mathematics teacher for middle school students."I want to go back and pick up the tempo of the classroom again," said Sister Mary, 58. "I find that exciting."Her announcement saddened students at the Roman Catholic school on Jane Drive.

William T. Smyth, 74, owner of Towson accounting firmWilliam T. Smyth, a tax preparation specialist who had owned an accounting firm in Towson, died Saturday of a heart attack at his residence at Oak Crest Village retirement community in Parkville. He was 74.Mr. Smyth, who had been a longtime Lutherville resident, retired in 1986. He began his business career working with his father, Albert S. Smyth, who in 1914 founded Albert S. Smyth Co. Inc. jewelers in Baltimore. The firm now is in Timonium.