Peter Martinek-Jenne stood in front of a class of 5- and 6-year-olds, armed with a marker, and asked them what they knew about Martin Luther King Jr.

The kindergartners proceeded to come up with everything from the fact that he was born in Georgia to the idea that he wanted people to get along “peacely.” Martinek-Jenne listened to each contribution and wrote them all down, asking the children to guess many of the words as he wrote them.

Conference highlights views on death penalty
Pope John Paul II’s teaching that the death penalty should be imposed rarely, if ever, represents “a continuity with tradition rather than a reversal,” Cardinal Avery Dulles said at a Jan. 25 conference on capital punishment.

“The classical position has been modified, not reversed,” said the Jesuit theologian in his remarks leading off “A Call for Reckoning: Religion and the Death Penalty,” organized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life at the University of Chicago Divinity School. “It has been a legitimate development of doctrine. Self-defense of society continues to justify the death penalty.”

School initiatives: New fund, teacher academy and more
Ten days after announcing a reorganization plan and the closing of 14 Catholic schools, Superintendent Nicholas M. Wolsonovich took to the microphone Jan. 24 to spread some good news.

Wolsonovich, who took over as the leader of the nation’s largest non-public school system last summer, announced the creation of a new endowment fund for the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Catholic schools, envisioned a new Catholic teacher training academy and regional schools at the Academy of St. Benedict the African on the South Side and Children of Peace school in the University Village area.

Hispanic ministry’s remarkable achievements in 2001
In most people’s minds, Sept. 11 will forever define the year of 2001. It was also a year in which many important strides were made in the area of Hispanic ministry within the Archdiocese of Chicago. Although the world stopped turning for a brief moment in September and has slowly begun to return to its original state, the work in Hispanic ministry continued because of its tremendous momentum.

Instruments of peace
In Assisi, religious leaders call violence, religions incompatible

Violence and terrorism are incompatible with the faith and belief of all the world’s religions, more than 200 spiritual leaders said during their Jan. 24 meeting with Pope John Paul II in Assisi.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the pope said, religious leaders have wanted to do their part to fend off “the dark clouds of terrorism, hatred (and) armed conflict.”

In his Jan. 27 midday Angelus address, Pope John Paul said the daylong interreligious pilgrimage to the birthplace of St. Francis of Assisi marked “another milestone on the path of building a civilization of peace and love.”