Chapel

ST. MARY'S CITY -- Archaeologists excavating the remains of the Great Brick Chapel in St. Mary's City have detected a mysterious object beneath the 323-year-old Catholic church's ruins.Ground-penetrating radar used to map disturbed earth beneath the chapel floor located the extremely dense object in August, under the north transept of the cross-shaped church. Project scientists say the object is even denser than the building's 3-foot-thick brick foundation."It could be something natural, like a rock," said Henry Miller, chief archaeologist for Historic St. Mary's City.

ST. MARY'S CITY -- In 1704, Maryland's Protestant-controlled government padlocked the Roman Catholic chapel in St. Mary's City as part of a campaign of religious and political suppression of Catholics.Jesuit missionaries later dismantled the "Brick Chapel" and carted off its bricks for use elsewhere. The foundation and burial ground were plowed under by farmers and nearly forgotten.Yesterday, the private Historic St. Mary's City Foundation unveiled a five-year, $5 million plan to rebuild the church on its 330-year-old footings.

Joshua Fischer will have graduated from the Naval Academy by the time the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel is due to open in spring 2005. But Fischer, 21, president of the Jewish Midshipmen's Club, has big plans for the $12.8 million center -- the academy's first Jewish house of worship. "One day, when I find a woman who wants to marry me -- and be stuck with me for the rest of my life -- hopefully I'll come back and get married there," said Fischer, of Phoenix, Ariz. The academy broke ground on the project yesterday.

Jerry Hicks, 64, lives in Glen Burnie, but he prays several times a week at Our Lady's Center, off Rogers Avenue in Ellicott City. "I'm a roaming Catholic," he jokes, noting that he also attends churches in Washington and on the Eastern Shore. For almost six years, roaming to Ellicott City meant that Hicks had to pray in a double-wide rented trailer, because the original building had been destroyed by fire Dec. 22, 2001. After years of effort, mostly by retired engineer Philip Adinolfi, 84, the structure has been rebuilt and is roughly double its original size.

Men in hard hats and blue jeans are creating a dust storm of activity at the Carroll Lutheran Village Retirement Community on the western edge of Westminster.The construction crews are working at a frantic pace, placing the final trusses on the roof of the village's new chapel.The Krug Chapel/Auditorium is part of a $13.2 million building and renovation project that includes a new assisted-living wing and a 24-bed dementia unit. The chapel is named for the Rev. Harry Victor Krug, one of the founders of the village.

The 200-year-old Neo-Gothic chapel is so carefully tucked behind a shaded block of Paca Street that many Baltimore natives don't know it exists. But yesterday, Catholic leaders and longtime admirers of St. Mary's Chapel pledged to increase its visibility while celebrating the vital role the church and its surrounding historic site have played in American Catholicism. "We live in such a fast-moving society," said Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien. "It would be easy to overlook our site and the importance to our faith.

It's difficult for some to believe that nestled among rows of young pine trees, country homes and horse pastures of Woodbine sits one of Howard County's major businesses.In fact, Chapel Valley Landscape Co. is probably the largest employer in western Howard.Last week the company celebrated 25 years in business, during which it has grown faster than the shrubs, flowers and trees it has arranged around some of the Baltimore-Washington area's well-known institutions, as well as many homes in Howard County.

ST. MARY'S CITY -Henry Miller's assignment might have been hopeless. As research director for Historic St. Mary's City, he was expected to guide the reconstruction of the first Roman Catholic house of worship in English America, for which no drawings or even written descriptions have ever been found. All that was left of the 1667 Brick Chapel in Maryland's first Colonial capital were its huge, 3-foot-thick brick foundation and thousands of fragments of glass, lead, brick and plaster sifted from the soil during 20 years of painstaking archaeology.

Reconstruction of Our Lady's Center, a chapel dedicated to the veneration of the Virgin Mary, will begin soon, a few hundred yards from one of Ellicott City's busiest commercial areas. The chapel was destroyed by a fire just a few days before Christmas a year ago. Work on the new chapel is scheduled to start at the end of next month. Weekday Masses conducted by area priests will continue in a trailer on the property, located off Rogers Avenue just south of U.S. 40. Between 10 and 20 people visit the trailer each day to attend the only noon Mass offered in the area.

For five years, the Rev. Donald P. Roberts, chaplain at St. Paul's School, has been an itinerant preacher, offering worship services in an arts center, a multipurpose room and a gym on the Brooklandville campus."