Several large coalitions are mobilizing religious communities nationwide in support of overhauling the nation's health-care system. In recent weeks, hundreds of clergy members and lay leaders have descended on the offices of members of Congress, urging lawmakers to enact health-care legislation this year. With face-to-face lobbying, sermons, prayer and advertising on Christian radio stations, the coalitions are pressing the idea that health care for everyone is a fundamental moral issue.

The fastest way to recover from the current economic crisis and the only way to ensure that a similar financial meltdown does not occur again is for governments to take seriously their role as regulators, the Vatican secretary of state told members of the Italian Senate. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of state, outlined the contents of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth") at a special meeting of the Senate July 28.

Reporting from Washington -- With House leaders struggling to reach agreement on healthcare legislation, aiming toward a possible vote this week, a new hurdle has emerged: abortion. Some conservative Democrats are threatening to pull their support from the massive healthcare bill unless their concerns over potential federal funding of abortion procedures are met. They fear that the Obama administration will take advantage of an expanded government role in healthcare to increase the availability of abortions nationwide.

An executive and regular donor was planning a charity golf tournament. An active church had plans for a new project in north St. Louis. Both needed an official vehicle for their plans, an organization to carry the banner. But rather than look to existing groups, they all founded nonprofit organizations. And in taking matters into their own hands, they joined a gathering legion who have incorporated nonprofits to match their passions and ideas. In Missouri, the number of new nonprofit corporations founded annually has risen steadily this decade, from 1,233 in 2000 to 2,257 in 2007. In 2008, the number exploded to 3,082, almost a 37 percent increase in a single year. In all, the state has more than 52,400 registered nonprofits.

Massachusetts is wrestling with the first major cut to its landmark health care law after lawmakers eliminated subsidized insurance to thousands of legal immigrants - and now are weighing whether to partially restore it. The state budget approved by lawmakers last month ended health care funding for nearly 30,000 legal immigrants enrolled in the subsidized care plan that is the core of the law, a cut that saves the state an estimated $130 million. Gov. Deval Patrick signed the budget, but asked lawmakers to partially reinstate the coverage by restoring $70 million.

The Rev. Mitchell Kent knows about the risks of payday lending very well -- to the tune of $5,000. Those risks include loan fees that add up quickly, fees that faith-based and consumer groups pushing for reform of the industry say are exorbitant and akin to usury. For the Columbus, Ohio, minister, it all began about nine years ago when he needed $100 to pay a utility bill. With no cash in hand but a secure paycheck just two weeks away, he walked into one of the city's proliferating payday lending stores.

President Obama's nominee for ambassador to the Vatican, Miguel Diaz, told senators last Wednesday, July 22nd, that his socially conscious scholarship gives him common ground with fellow theologian Pope Benedict XVI, which could further U.S. policies and interests in Rome. "My commitment to creating dialogue related to cultural diversity, immigration, poverty and the role of religion and society prepares me well for this endeavor," Diaz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It did not take long for anti-abortion leaders to realize that George R. Tiller was more formidable than other doctors they had tried to shut down. Shrewd and resourceful, Dr. Tiller made himself the nation's pre-eminent abortion practitioner, advertising widely and drawing women to Wichita from all over with his willingness to perform late-term abortions, hundreds each year. As anti-abortion activists discovered, he gave as good as he got, wearing their contempt as a badge of honor. A "warrior," they called him with grudging respect. And so for more than 30 years the anti-abortion movement threw everything into driving Dr. Tiller out of business, certain that his defeat would deal a devastating blow to the "abortion industry" that has terminated roughly 50 million pregnancies since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Reporting from Vatican City -- God will be right back -- after this commercial message. Vatican Radio, the official voice of the Roman Catholic Church, has begun airing advertisements for the first time in its nearly 80-year history, injecting a bit of the profane into its otherwise unwavering lineup of sacred programming. Now, in addition to tracking every move Pope Benedict XVI makes and every word he utters, listeners are being treated to 45-second ads, made in five languages, extolling Italy's largest power company, Enel, and the virtues of clean energy.

For some D.C. nonprofit agencies, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's recent proposal to sharply cut earmarks was more bad news in a troubled economy -- the sudden reduction of grants they had been counting on. Yesterday, leaders of many local groups began to pore over their budgets in search of ways to scale back. A variety of services and expenses would be affected, including centers where low-income families seek tax advice and a dance floor for community arts performances. "It's tough out there," said Mary Brown, executive director of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, an arts program for boys east of the Anacostia River, who said she would need to rely more on volunteers and less on staff if the group's $100,000 earmark was trimmed to $40,000.

Ahead of what many see as the last chance for a peaceful solution to the political crisis in Honduras, the U.S. bishops are calling on the nation's secretary of state to take the "appropriate" steps to avoid further conflict in the Central American country. Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace, sent a letter on Thursday to Hilary Rodham Clinton about the ongoing situation in Honduras, where a June 28 coup ousted President Manuel Zelaya, accused by Hondurans of breaking constitutional law with an attempt to extend his term. "We urge continuing efforts to help the people of Honduras resolve peacefully the current political crisis," he urged.

The U.S. Economy is showing signs of improvement, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday unemployment will likely remain high into 2011. In Monroe County, the unemployment rate stands at 8.5 percent. That's up from 7.7 percent in May. A local networking group is trying to bring those numbers down, and they're doing it with faith. It's called the Keep the Faith Job Networking Group. Kevin Donals of Penfield is part of the group. He lost his job with Eastman Kodak after 33 years of work. "I've never been out of work my whole life," said Donals. "This is the first time."

A year after a massive raid on an Iowa meat-packing plant, not far from his congregation, a Lutheran pastor decided to take some time off to draw connections between biblical narratives and illegal immigration. His first stop? The Yakima Valley, where for the past week he's talked with farm workers, growers, immigration activists, leaders of faith-based organizations and anyone else with a tale to tell about illegal immigration."I've learned so much, especially the way that individual relationships shape the way people see these larger issues," said the Rev. David Vasquez."There's a distinction being made ... Growers might express an issue with illegal immigration, yet they're appreciative of their individual workers. And at times workers might be critical of the challenges of being undocumented and working extremely hard, but they're appreciative of the people they work for."

Amid the growing heat over the place of abortion in the health care system, it's very difficult to pin down a fairly basic fact: The share of American women whose health care currently covers abortion. That's deeply relevant to the current attempts to find a compromise in health care reform that leaves the status quo in place, as the way in which federal money and federal rules handle abortion depends on what that status quo actually is. The Guttmacher Institute argues, in a memo linking a larger study on the matter, that its own survey found that 87% of plans , while another study, based on a questionnaire of human resources executives found 46% of plans cover the procedure.

A Catholic priest who serves as governor of the Philippine province of Pampanga has declared he is running for president of the country in the May 2010 election. "I have every intention to file my candidacy," Father Eddie Panlilio told reporters at a weekly forum organized in Manila by Catholic media groups July 21, according to the Asian church news agency UCA News. The priest turned politician, who is currently on leave from his religious ministry, also announced his plan to apply for a dispensation from the priesthood before filing his certificate of candidacy prior to the Nov. 30 deadline.

Saying they have been too silent for too long in the fight against HIV and AIDS, leaders of several Baltimore faith-based groups converted nearly a dozen churches Tuesday into places where people could be tested for the virus without fear of being stigmatized. The JACQUES Initiative - a program at the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine - launched Project SHALEM in partnership with the Maryland AIDS Administration and several local faith-based and community organizations. Shalem means "peace" or "a safe place" in the Christian, Islam and Jewish faiths.

In 2004, conservative evangelical leaders in Washington state were in full political force. In only a few short weeks, they gathered more than 20,000 people to Safeco Field to rally for traditional marriage, then several months later, celebrated President Bush's re-election. Five years later, though, the movement is deflated and in disarray. Many of the early leaders have stepped back due to health or age, because they feel burned at being called haters or because they're tired of political divisiveness, saying it gets in the way of saving souls.

Chastity Turner, 9, was bathing the family dog on her grandmother's porch at the end of June. It was the beginning of summer in Chicago. There was sunshine, a garden hose and drool. Then gun shots."I've learned that life is short," says Chastity's cousin, Chante Moffett. Life was much too short for Chastity, ending that day when a bullet pierced the back of her neck, the result of a gang shooting from a moving van. She became one of 40 Chicago school children gunned down this year, but sadly not the latest. Two teen boys were shot Friday evening near St. Sabina Catholic Church, one has been released from the hospital while the other remains in stable condition.

A controversial facility at Ft. Benning, Ga. -- formerly known as the U.S. Army's School of the Americas -- is still training Honduran officers despite claims by the Obama administration that it cut military ties to Honduras after its president was overthrown June 28, NCR has learned. A day after an SOA-trained army general ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint, President Barack Obama stated that "the coup was not legal" and that Zelaya remained "the democratically elected president." The Foreign Operations Appropriations Act requires that U.S. military aid and training be suspended when a country undergoes a military coup, and the Obama administration has indicated those steps have been taken.

As the Vatican takes a close look at what might be done about the rapidly diminishing number of Catholic nuns in the United States, some women religious are questioning the motives behind the sudden interest in their congregations. The first "apostolic visitation of institutes of women religious" is vaguely described as an effort to "comprehensively assess and encourage the growth" of those institutes. The visitation kicks into its second phase next month, when questionnaires will be sent to nearly 400 institutes across the country. "I think everybody is just kind of waiting to see what is happening," said Sister Jean M. Thompson, a Franciscan nun who serves as the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo's vicar for religious. "People are wondering what it's all about. We don't really know locally. We don't know exactly why this is being done."

The collapse of Communism in the East two decades ago did not provide much of an opening for the Catholic Church to influence economic policy, but perhaps the near-collapse of Western capitalism will. Two German authors - one named Marx, the other his patron in Rome - are certainly hoping so. The first is Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, who has written a best seller in Germany that he cheekily titled "Das Kapital" (and in which he addresses that other Marx - Karl - as "dear namesake"). The second is Pope Benedict XVI, who last week published his first papal encyclical on economic and social matters. It has a more gentle title, "Charity in Truth," but is based on the same essential line of thinking. Indeed, Archbishop Marx had a hand in advising the pope on it, and a reading of the archbishop's book helps explain the intellectual context in which the encyclical was composed.

Christian humanitarian groups over the weekend hailed news of the G-8's commitment to investing $20 billion to help fight world hunger. "We welcome President Obama's lead on this issue and the renewed focus by the G-8 on fighting global hunger," said Robert Zachritz, World Vision's director for advocacy and government relations in the United States. "We have the audacity to believe that we can end global hunger if governments make these sorts of major commitments to join in the fight," added Bill O'Keefe, Catholic Relief Services' senior director for advocacy.

The budget storm has passed, but Ohioans who use libraries, home care for the elderly, mental-health treatment or services for abused children will be counting casualties for weeks and months to come. Those and dozens of other state-funded services will be hard hit by $2.5 billion in cuts built into a controversial $50.5 billion budget approved yesterday by state lawmakers. Legislators are taking a "huge gamble" with the lives of the state's neediest families, said Joel Potts, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors' Association. "They're betting that we really don't need money for these people and they will get services somewhere else and children will not suffer," he said.

Pope Benedict XVI's July 10 meeting with President Barack Obama was "a constructive model of respectful dialogue and creative engagement," said Catholic University of America international politics professor Maryann Cusimano Love. Several other veteran Vatican and White House watchers interviewed by NCR had similar positive impressions of Obama's first meeting with the head of the Catholic church. It was a 35-minute private discussion in Vatican City -- sandwiched, for Obama, between a Group of Eight leading industrial nations meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, and a presidential trip to Ghana to promote better U.S.-African relations.

Keith Ellison is what he is -- the first Muslim elected to Congress, the first African American to represent Minnesota -- while trying not to be too much of what he is. But not too little, either. Quietly devout, he unrolls his prayer rug in the privacy of his office in the Longworth House Office Building, facing the corner beyond which lies Mecca -- but that is still too Muslim for some. Antiwar, he once voted for an Iraq war-funding bill because it had a timetable for withdrawal -- but that was not dovish enough for some protesters who subsequently held a sit-in at his Minneapolis office.