In his long-awaited new encyclical on the economy, Pope Benedict XVI appears set to call for new global “synergies” among labor unions in order to resist cuts in social safety nets, stronger efforts to combat world hunger, and greater protections for the “ecological health of the planet.”

Benedict’s new social encyclical, titled Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), will likely not be released until early July, but this morning’s Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading daily newspaper, carried lengthy extracts.

While the pope has consulted a number of experts, both economists and theologians, the final text of the encyclical appears to be very much his own work. According to the Corriere report, Benedict XVI has been working on the text for months, even correcting a draft during his mid-May trip to the Middle East.

The Anti-Defamation League testified Thursday at the Senate Judiciary Committee in support pf hate-crimes legislation.

ADL Washington counsel Michael Lieberman spoke in support of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Protection Act, which would permit greater federal involvement in investigating hate crimes and expand the federal definition of such crimes to include those motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability.

"We have no illusions about this legislation," Lieberman testified. "We know that bigotry, racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism cannot be legislated out of existence. A new federal law that finally addresses all victims of hate crimes will not eliminate them."

Bishop Lee Piché, in his first official public act after his June 29 ordination as a bishop, joined religious leaders and about 200 people on the Capitol steps June 30 to lament Gov. Tim Paw­lenty’s budget cutting plan, termed “unallotment.”

The group, including parishioners from the Minneapolis parishes of St. Stephen and St. Joan of Arc and representatives from the Catholic Cha­ri­ties Office for Social Justice, walked in a funeral-like procession from Christ Lutheran Church in St. Paul to the Capitol to deliver notes to the governor expressing its concern.

Caritas Christi Health Care, the financially challenged Catholic hospital system founded by the Archdiocese of Boston, is abruptly ending its joint venture with a Missouri-based health insurer at the insistence of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, who has decided that the relationship represented too much of an entanglement between Catholic hospitals and abortion providers.

The change will have no effect on patient care, because Caritas will continue to participate in the state-subsidized program, called Commonwealth Care, but now simply as one of many healthcare providers treating patients, and no longer as a co-owner of an insurance venture.

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

Dozens of speakers lined up to speak Tuesday on California's new proposed rules for executing condemned inmates, but the public hearing quickly morphed into a debate over the morality and practicality of capital punishment.

George Husaruk and his wife drove two-and-a-half hours from their home near Willits to argue that California can no longer afford the death penalty.

"We need to use the money for education," the middle-school teacher said during a daylong meeting convened by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to take public comment on its proposed lethal injection procedures.

An activist priest in Honduras went into hiding after soldiers attacked a group of protesters who had blocked a rural highway in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Father Jose Andres Tamayo, the parish priest in Salama, told Catholic News Service by telephone July 1 that he and hundreds of other residents of the rural province of Olancho were on their way to Tegucigalpa June 29 to join a pro-Zelaya march when soldiers shot out tires on their seven rented buses near the town of Los Limones, about 100 miles from the nation's capital.

Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant leaders gathered Tuesday evening in a Lutheran Church to pray, preach, plead and lament the passage of an immigration bill. They even called for it to be repealed. Their words cannot stop Senate Bill 81 from taking effect today, but they hoped to provide comfort and express solidarity with Utah's undocumented immigrants.

"SB81 is a symbol of the brokenness in our community," said the Rev. Steve Klemz, pastor at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Salt Lake City who organized the interfaith service. "We lament in public because the love of God is always love of neighbor."

As they work with lawmakers this summer to help craft health care reform legislation, Catholic health ministry leaders say they will push for measures that will sustain principles of human dignity and justice, and extend coverage to the nation's poor and vulnerable.

"It's going to be a work in progress," said Charity Sr. Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association. The organization is not supporting a particular legislative model, but will evaluate each alternative in terms of its potential to deliver cost-effective, quality care to everyone who needs it.

The current health care delivery system "leaves a lot of people out," Keehan said in an interview earlier this month. "We’re open to everyone's ideas, and we will judge our support and lack of support on the basis of whether or not they meet our principles."

In a letter to leaders participating in the G8 Summit in Italy, July 8-10, the presidents of the Catholic bishops' conferences of the G8 nations urged Summit leaders to "take concerted actions to protect poor persons and assist developing countries."

The bishops observed that poor persons and nations have contributed the least to creating the economic crisis and to the human cause of global climate change, but in both cases are likely to suffer tragic consequences.

The conference presidents wrote: "Our moral tradition commits the Church to protecting human life and dignity, especially of the poorest, most vulnerable members of the human family. In the faces of poor persons the Catholic Church sees the face of Christ whom we serve in countries throughout the world."