ROY — When he was a boy 60 or so years ago, Allan Vanderzanden’s father asked him to help repair storm damage atop the bell tower of St. Francis Church here.

“I have hands, like your hands,” the aging man told the fresh-faced students. “There was no friendly handshake, no compassionate touch. For months I did not feel the touch of another human being except the slap of the guard across the face. I have ears, like your ears.

BEAVERTON — When he turned 100 last month, Father John Reedy received fat stacks of mail. People who met him 70 years ago explained how his kind and candid words of advice and his listening ear had turned their lives around. They had the stories to prove it.

The Ember Day for Advent will be on Wednesday, Dec. 3. An Ember Day is a day set aside for prayer and fasting.

Archbishop John G. Vlazny instituted Ember Days in the Archdiocese of Portland in 2002 as days for prayer for victims of child sexual abuse.

Four days before a pro-life billboard featuring the Virgin Mary was to appear near a Planned Parenthood construction site, developers of the building had the entire sign structure removed.

The demolition, pro-life advocates say, is the latest example of efforts to limit their expression.

BEND — St. Francis of Assisi Parish is realizing its dream of a larger church to accommodate the growing number of Catholics in central Oregon.

The new $5.5 million, 800-seat church, centerpiece of a larger Catholic development, will be completed by late spring, 2009.

He’s 59 and this fall, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy for a third time. He was 17 the first time around and needed a signed note from his parents.

Holy Cross Father Bill Dorwart, gentle and soft-spoken director of campus ministry at the University of Portland, is returning to the military because he believes that is where he is most needed.

MARYLHURST — Judith Johansen, an attorney and energy industry executive, is the new president of Marylhurst University.

Bishop William Skylstad will discuss emerging environmental issues, including the future of water resources, and the role Catholic social teaching plays in addressing climate change at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18, in the Buckley Center Auditorium at the University of Portland.

Now that physician-assisted suicide is the law in Washington state, advocates in other areas see an opportunity.

Voters in Washington last week OK’d protections for doctors who write lethal prescriptions by a 58 to 42 percent margin.

That makes Washington the second state, after Oregon, to allow the controversial practice.