ROY — They put the home back in funeral home.

Aaron and Elizabeth Duyck operate Duyck & VanDeHey from their large house on Roy Road, a half-mile south of St. Francis Church here and hollering distance from the farm started by the Duyck family in 1907.

Fifty years ago, a Catholic kid from St. Patrick Parish in Northwest Portland took the baseball world by storm.

Mickey Lolich, a child of the Croatian community that peopled Slabtown, pitched and won three games for the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series win over the defending champion St. Louis Cardinals. The left-handed 1954 graduate of Cathedral School and Lincoln High School threw on short rest, winning Game 7 over legendary St. Louis flamethrower Bob Gibson.

A few years ago, a young man came to Catholic Charities Oregon desperate for help. He’d been living on the streets, was addicted to drugs and his girlfriend was pregnant.

The agency, long on the frontlines fighting poverty and homelessness in the state, did what it’s done for the past 85 years: express Gospel-centered love through practical support.

The New York-based Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights has lit into the Multnomah County Library for hosting a children’s hour with drag queens who dress as flamboyant nuns.

On Oct. 23, the Hillsdale Library hosted “Drag Queen Storytime with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” for children ages 2 to 6.

Will you, or won’t you?

In Charles Dickens’ 1853 novel “Bleak House,” a lawsuit drags on for years, ruining a family. The enduring trouble erupted because of lack of clarity in a man’s last will and testament.

Following a 32-year tradition, the Serra Club hosted Sisters from throughout western Oregon at the Double Tree Hotel in Northeast Portland to affirm their vocational call and thank them for their service. 

The end of the death penalty in Washington state could spark a similar outcome in neighboring Oregon, say leaders of the local abolition movement.

“Clearly, both Washington and Oregon have a conflicted and reluctant history with the death penalty,” said Lynn Strand, a member of Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Lake Oswego and vice chairwoman of the board of Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Strand points to both moral and fiscal reasons that Northwesterners want to nix executions.

“We haven’t seen as many national education contest winners from Oregon as we have now,” said Lorayne Zimmerman, state chairwoman of education for Oregon’s Catholic Daughters of the Americas.

Four national winners of the annual competition hail from the Archdiocese of Portland. Their entries — an essay, poems, computer art and a photo — first competed on the local CDA court level with a field of 100 others. All local first place winners competed statewide, then went on to national.

Catholic leaders are asking Oregonians to approve Measure 106, a grassroots ballot initiative that would limit taxpayer funding of elective abortions. 

“Our public tax dollars should be used to truly support women and families in need and not to pay for the irreversible and harmful effects of abortion,” Portland Archbishop Alexander Sample wrote in a letter read at western Oregon parishes last weekend. “Oregonians should no longer be forced to pay for elective, late-term and even sex-selective abortions.”

MEDFORD — It’s one of Medford’s newest gated communities.

A year after it opened, a tiny house project funded in part by the Catholic Relief Services Rice Bowl Small Grants Program is full and ready for expansion.

From the editor

Whether you like pages in your hands, or a PDF file you can access with computer or smartphone, this 236-page document offers information you can’t find elsewhere about pastoral center offices, parishes, clergy, religious, schools, helping agencies and Catholic organizations.

At least one priest in Oregon had the condition and left the ministry. It affects students at Catholic schools and regular Catholics in the pews.

Seasonal affective disorder makes an unwelcome appearance each fall in Oregon, which is famous for rain and pewter skies from October through May.

PORTLAND — Providence Portland Medical Center has named Kendall Sawa as new chief operating officer. He currently serves as chief executive for Providence Seaside Hospital and North Coast Service Area. He begins his new role Nov. 5.

MOUNT ANGEL — A small general contracting firm, in a small office, in a small town has built remarkable modern Catholic buildings in Oregon. The Grant Company, lodged in a former liquor store and flower shop on Charles Street here, is headed by 69-year-old Mike Grant, one of Oregon’s most revered carpenters.

Jawad Khan’s 3-year-old daughter was at his side when a motorist in the family-friendly Portland suburb of Beaverton rolled down a window and shouted, “Sand N-word!”

Confused, the little girl asked her father what it meant.