In the nearly six months that the Diocese of Belleville’s new superintendent of schools/director of education Jonathan “Skip” Birdsong has been on the job, he has visited 26 Catholic schools. The new director took charge August 1, just as the new school year was beginning. Almost immediately he began accompanying Bishop Edward K. Braxton on …

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Office for Black Catholics will sponsor a keynote address by Bishop Edward K. Braxton of the Diocese of Belleville. The presentation is the second in a three-part series developed by the Office for Black Catholics in response to the U.S. bishops’ pastoral initiative against racism, “Open …

By SUZANNE KOZIATEK Staff writer An innovative program to provide peer-to-peer literacy help in Illinois’ prisons has been phenomenally successful: results show 97 percent of inmates who were tutored by other inmates have advanced their reading skills, making them more employable after release and less likely to end up back in prison. Now, the agency …