Archbishop Pio Laghi, the Popes representative in Washington, D.C., has recently been appointed head of the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education (for Seminaries and Educational Institutions). Archbishop Laghi is leaving behind a hierarchy that he helped remake under the direction of John Paul II. As the Popes representative to the US. church he was intimately involved in the appointment of bishops (see "The Selection of Bishops," AM., Aug. 18, 1984). His legacy to the U S. church includes the bishops appointed during his tenure, some of whom will serve into the 21st century.

Occasionally, people ask me questions as if I’d become the Carl Sagan of the adolescent universe. I grant that 22 years of reading 40 reflection papers from each of what now amounts to about 3,500 high-school and college students has given me perhaps a better insight into what teen-agers think than, say, a first-time parent--and surely better than the teenager, but I still have more than a few reminders of my finitude and fallibility. One of them arrived in the mail last Friday, from a group of high-school principals, asking me to give a workshop on teen-age spirituality next winter in Thcson, Ariz.

The most typical symbol of Christmas is a light shining in the darkness. The shep­herds in the fields and the wise men in the east suddenly see the night made bright. It is a season for candles and stars, and its theological sense is caught in one of the readings from the liturgy for Christmas night: "The grace of God has appeared, offering salvation to all men" (Titus, 2:11).