About 500 congregants and clergy from Bay Area churches packed into Holy Rosary Parish hall in Antioch on Monday night for a spirited town hall meeting to demand a broad-based approach to helping people avoid foreclosure. The theme of helping families, not just bankers, underlay many of the evening's speeches. The meeting, which was Webcast to supporters in 20 cities, kicked off a national, faith-based campaign by PICO National Network, an affiliation of 1,000 congregations nationwide based in Oakland. PICO, which stands for People Improving Communities Through Organizing, calls for a systematic approach to modifying problematic mortgages instead of treating them on a case-by-case basis. With 1.2 million homes nationwide already lost to foreclosure and another 2.2 million at risk over the next year, it is urgent to "stop the bleeding," both to save homes and to help stabilize the housing market, PICO says.

If a group of Catholics were to sit down to read four or five of the "Catholic voter guides" in circulation before Election Day, it wouldn't be surprising if they ended the session more confused than when they began. Various Catholic organizations, religious communities, bishops individually and collectively, and even some individual Catholics have put into writing their best advice on how Catholic social teaching should guide decisions in the voting booth. In its "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics," the group names five issues as nonnegotiable -- abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning and same-sex marriage. The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, on the other hand, sees the election in much broader terms in its voter guide, called "Loving Our Neighbors in a Shrinking World." "Peace. Security. Racial equity. Economic well-being. A healthy environment. Human dignity. These are the basic needs of every human being and of the earth," it says. "We encourage candidates to make explicit their commitment to the global common good."

Left-leaning Christian and social activists see opportunity in an unconventional presidential race and a spiraling national economy: pushing poverty as an election issue. At a time when more than 37 million Americans are in poverty, including many who are newly poor and paying keen attention, spiritual leaders are encouraging the young to vote and urging voters to select candidates who will fight poverty. "I feel more momentum, energy and focus on poverty than I have in churches in three decades or more," said Jim Wallis, chief executive officer of Sojourners social justice ministries in Washington. In Orlando, participants in Sojourners' Vote Out Poverty initiative have coalesced around a controversial city law that prohibited feeding the homeless in a city park.

Justice and religious freedom are essential for peace, said Catholic leaders from the Middle East, Eastern Europe and India. The leaders, who were participating in the world Synod of Bishops on the Bible, issued an appeal Oct. 24 asking God to protect those who suffer and calling on all people of good will to work for "peace in freedom, in truth and in love." The appeal was signed by representatives of 10 Eastern Catholic churches, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, the Vatican secretary of state, the prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, the secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops and the three cardinals who served as delegate presidents of the synod.

While immigration is almost a non-issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, American Apparel, the biggest garment manufacturer in the country, is doing its best to keep the debate alive, saying legalizing foreign workers is good for business. Amid the whirr of sewing machines and clatter of cloth-laden carts, workers sport T-shirts that display their job functions in both Spanish and English, and telephone calls to family in Mexico are free. Its campaign to legalize immigrants fits with a progressive image -- the 230,000 garments it churns out a day are all made by some 4,500 workers at its Los Angeles factory, and the company advertises its products as "sweatshop free."

A Vatican official is advocating a new "logic" for an economy and a financial system that have forgotten that the good of man and mankind should be the primary focus. This was the observation made by Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, in a Friday interview with Vatican Radio. The cardinal had just finished a meeting in Rome with experts from various countries regarding the current worldwide economic crisis. According to Cardinal Martino, even with economic strain, governments should maintain their commitments regarding development. What needs to be changed, he said, is the "logic of the market."

The Catholic Church resettled 17,823 refugees in 2008, through Migration and Refugee Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB/MRS) and its network of diocesan entities, representing 30 percent of the total refugees admitted to the nation. Overall, the U.S. government admitted 60,192 refugees during the fiscal year that ended September 30. This number represents a 31 percent increase over last year in the number of cases handled by MRS. In 2007, MRS resettled 13,631 of 48,281 refugees or 28 percent of all refugees admitted into the United States. In 2008, MRS resettled people from 45 countries. The largest groups came from Burma, Iraq, Cuba, Bhutan, Burundi, Somalia, Iran, Vietnam, Congo, and Liberia.

The Democratic party has recruited a dozen anti-abortion Democratic challengers to run for the House this year and has aggressively supported with millions of dollars and other resources in culturally conservative districts long unfriendly to the party. That is the highest number of anti-abortion candidates the party has fielded in recent memory to run either for open seats or against Republican challengers, according to party strategists and a leading anti-abortion organization. It is a strategy that that has received little attention in an election year dominated nationally by a grim economic picture and an unpopular president. But Democratic Party strategists contend that in Congressional races, in which local sensibilities and attitudes often play as a big a role as national trends, candidates like Mr. Bright could potentially deprive Republicans of the one realm where they have enjoyed a significant advantage: social issues.

Catholics are required to oppose abortion on demand and to provide help to mothers facing challenging pregnancies, the chairmen of two committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in an Oct. 21 statement. "Both approaches to opposing abortion are essential. By protecting the child's life to the maximum degree possible, improving life-affirming support for pregnant women and changing the attitudes and prejudices imposed on many women to make them see abortion as an acceptable or necessary solution, we will truly help build a culture of life," they said.

Memphis Bishop J. Terry Steib this week called upon Catholics to avoid being one-issue voters. He asked them to follow their consciences and weigh all the moral issues they face before casting their ballots. "We must recognize," he wrote, "that God through the church, is calling us to be prophetic in our own day. If our conscience is well formed, then we will make the right choices about candidates who may not support the church's position in every case." Citing words from a statement, "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," a voting guide issued last November by the bishops of the United States, Steib wrote that "there may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate's unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil."

Lamenting that illegal immigration has been largely unaddressed during the presidential campaign, Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando, Fla., said the new White House administration and Congress must confront the issue and develop a consistent, effective and humane policy that bridges political divisions. While high-profile, lightning-fast work-site raids across the country "meet the political need to show government's law enforcement's capabilities," they have had a minimal impact on the number of undocumented workers in the country, he said. Such efforts have done little more than cause what Bishop Wenski termed "dislocation and disruption in immigrant communities" while victimizing permanent U.S. residents and citizens, including children.

A diverse group of 2,000 evangelical Christian community activists from different denominations and political parties will meet in Miami this week to discuss ways to combat poverty and empower the disenfranchised. The three-day conference of the largest Christian community development organization in the country comes on the eve of a presidential election that likely will be decided by the economic issues that are an integral part of the group's faith-based mission. Titled "Seeking the Shalom of the City," the 19th annual Christian Community Development Association conference, which opens Wednesday at the James L. Knight Center, will offer more than 120 workshops tackling a variety of issues, from gentrification to grant-writing to encouraging women in the ministry. Each day's sessions will revolve around the theme of peace: personal and family shalom on Thursday; community, organizational and church shalom on Friday; and national and global shalom on Saturday.

Starting this month, construction of a more fortified barrier along the southern edge of the park and the three miles to the east will begin as part of the federal government's crackdown on drug and document smuggling, illegal crossings and violence in the surrounding area. Two 15-foot-high fences will flank the current one, forging a 90-foot-wide stretch for a paved border patrol road and stadium lights, according to Angela de Rocha, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokeswoman. The gap will transform the dynamics of the gatherings here, preventing touching and close conversation. With only distant glimpses to offer, it may mark an end to many, if not all, such visits.

As the world faces an economic crisis, Benedict XVI is encouraging that particular attention be paid to society's weakest families and individuals. The Pope stressed this need in a message sent on his behalf by his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for the World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty, celebrated each Oct. 17. The papal message was sent to Jean Tonglet, delegate for Italy of the ATD Fourth World movement. The Holy Father expressed his hope that "in the difficult international economic context of today, particular attention is given to the people and families who are most underprivileged and the weakest of society."

Federal judges on both coasts this month awarded major settlements to Hispanic guest workers in rulings that could alter the US immigration debate and potentially offer new jobs to Americans. Last week in San Francisco, a federal judge ordered back pay to braceros, the original guest workers from Mexico who laid track for American rail companies in the World War II era. A few days earlier in Atlanta, another federal judge ruled that 3,000 pineros, the "men of the pines" who plant the massive pine plantations of the deep South, have been grossly underpaid and subjected to capricious industry rules made possible by the workers' social and physical isolation. The court also ordered compensation. The rulings offer troubling insights into how US industries, especially in the South, exploit foreign guest workers under the loosely regulated H-2B visa program.

Rather than argue over the morality of abortion, these Democrats contend that the church's teachings on social justice and such issues as poverty, the environment, health care and unjust warfare should guide Catholic voters as much as abortion. The Democratic effort includes antiabortion Catholic scholars who have come out in favor of Sen. Barack Obama, a proliferation of progressive Catholic organizations that have sprung up contending that Catholic teachings do not forbid voting for a pro-choice politician, and such high-profile Catholic Democrats as Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the party's vice presidential nominee, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the final trek to Election Day, it is a debate making its way to the center of the presidential contest in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, home to large and influential Catholic populations.

Wealthy nations are reneging on commitments to help feed the world's hungry and may cite the banking crisis as a reason why they cannot do more, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told an international conference on combating starvation Thursday. Annan's address on World Food Day emphasized that 10,000 children in the Third World would die from malnutrition on Thursday alone - and this should be viewed as great a tragedy as the collapse of a bank. The G-8 meeting produced promises to boost development aid to Africa to US$50 billion by 2010. The Rome Food Summit ended with nations committing US $12 billion toward measures to modernize agricultural practices, including promises to buy more food from small African farmers and to help them boost their yields with fertilizer, high-tech seeds, irrigation and mechanical equipment. If the promises were kept, Third World hunger would decline, Annan said.

When Carl Anderson publicly rebuked Sen. Joe Biden last month for opposing the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, Anderson said he was speaking "on behalf of the 1.28 million" Knights of Columbus in the U.S. Everyone, that is, except for Knights like Rick Gebhard of Manistee, Mich. Gebhard, a 36-year-old public school teacher, says he founded Knights for Obama early this month to counter Anderson's "tacit endorsement" of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. Lay Catholics like Gebhard are resisting church pressure to make abortion the primary issue that should drive Catholics' votes, and also pushing back when high-profile Catholics like Anderson single out Democrats like Biden for public criticism.

Young Catholics are more progressive than older Catholics across a range of issues and on a number of topics are more progressive than their peers in other religious groups, according to a newly released survey by the group Faith in Public Life. Young Catholics, 18 to 34 years, constituted one group in a survey titled "The Young and the Faithful," designed and conducted by Public Religion Research. Faith in Public Life is one of a number of religious groups organized following the 2004 election with the intent of broadening the public debate on religious and social issues. "This is not the culture war generation," said Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, in drawing a broad conclusion from the study during a conference call. "From gay rights to the role of Americans around the world to working for the common good," the young people surveyed represent a group that "kind of works past the ideological divides" that have characterized the political debate of recent years.

American Catholic voters in 2008 tend to be more moderate and less liberal than U.S. voters as a whole, according to a survey commissioned by the Knights of Columbus and released Oct. 14. "A plurality of Catholic voters, 39 percent, are Democrats, and 45 percent describe themselves as moderate. Only 19 percent say they are liberal," the survey said. The survey was conducted by telephone with 813 self-identified Catholics Sept. 24-Oct. 3 by Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion. Those who identified themselves as practicing Catholics outnumbered nonpracticing Catholics by close to a 2-1 ratio. Interviewers polled 1,733 Americans in all, Catholics and non-Catholics.

American humorist Josh Billings once said, "Remember the poor, it costs nothing." The quip sounds close to the apparent sentiment among G-7 economic policymakers who met in Washington over the weekend to craft measures aimed at bailing out Western banks amid the global financial crisis. News of plans by the U.S. and European governments to inject cash into troubled banks helped propel stock markets worldwide to record gains Monday and Tuesday. For the first time in weeks investors dared to hope that the financial meltdown may be abating. But budding optimism in Europe and the U.S. may not travel far.

The ranks of low-wage working families increased by 350,000 between 2002 and 2006, raising their numbers to nearly 9.6 million, or more than one in four of the nation's working families with children. The report by the Working Poor Families Project, an advocacy group that analyzed census data, defined low-wage families as those earning less than double the poverty rate. For a family of four, that would have been an annual income of $41,228 or less in 2006. The report's author, Brandon G. Roberts, attributed the increase to the growth in low-paying jobs, from health-care aides to cashiers, that form an increasing share of the nation's service-based economy. Many of those families struggle to pay for basics, such as health care, food and housing, a battle that Roberts said has grown more acute in the past two years as the economy has stagnated.

Environment ministers agreed Tuesday that the world financial crisis must not halt efforts to combat global warming, a top United Nations climate official said. Officials from the U.S., China, Canada, India, the European Union and more than 30 other countries met for two days of informal talks in Warsaw ahead of a climate conference in December. Scientists say the emission of carbon and other greenhouse gases, mostly from fossil fuels, must peak within 10 to 15 years and then drop sharply to avoid potentially catastrophic changes in the climate. The discussions in Warsaw were aimed at laying the groundwork for a major U.N. climate change conference in December in Poznan, Poland that will include delegates from more than 190 countries. The conference will work out the details of a climate change accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The Holy See's permanent observer at the U.N. offices in Geneva is warning that there are millions of displaced persons uprooted by causes that are not covered by international protection agreements. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi made this observation when he addressed the U.N. refugee agency's annual Executive Committee meeting, which ended Friday. "The international community has managed to enact clear and courageous instruments to protect refugees from violence and persecution through the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, and through additional regional agreements," he noted. "Existing refugee instruments constitute the start of a continuum, at the opposite end of which we could place the conventions and agreements enacted by the United Nations and by the International Labor Organization in order to protect labor migrants and their families."