A few months back, Catholic officials joined with other faith leaders to announce plans for a “Summer of Peace” in Baltimore, with prayer, collections and volunteers directed toward reducing violence in the city.

Crime has continued unabated, with 18 people shot in a single incident in July and two shot in the Inner Harbor on a Saturday night in August. In an interview with the Catholic Review, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien was asked how frustrated he was.

“It’s safer in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think, sometimes,” said O’Brien, who was archbishop to the military services before he came to Baltimore. “Still, there are good people out there patrolling the streets and taking an interest in the neighborhoods and sacrificing themselves for the youth in the communities. If not for them, it could be much worse.”

Asked the causes of violence, he listed several factors that he says are interrelated.

“It’s family life, it’s education and lack of employment,” he said. “The industry of the city is drugs, it seems. It’s a vicious circle and we have to see how other communities have found a way to break that vicious circle because it’s destructive. I don’t think we’ve been very successful so far.”