In this age of global warming and unpredictable tsunamis and all manner of uncertainties financial and spiritual, it makes sense that we should all worry a little about the fate of our souls. As our spiritual guides are fond of reminding us, there is death at the end of this long and winding road and we should all remember to repent and be saved from a fate far worse than any tsunami. And so it was as if Africa's Catholic bishops had read my mind when they declared the other day: "Many Catholics in high office have fallen woefully short in their performance. The synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name."

Standing in the lobby of a Downtown hotel, a key adviser to the U.S. delegation to the G-20 Summit promised an array of religious leaders that he would carry their concern for the poor into the economic conclave. "We value your input and we know you hold us accountable," said Michael Froman, dubbed the "sherpa," after Himalayan mountain guides, because he leads the way to the summit. He is a deputy national security adviser specializing in global economics. "I appreciate your prayers. We will need them. This summit is about fixing financial systems...but also about addressing the needs of the most vulnerable." He cautioned the 30 religious leaders against expecting major new initiatives. He expects to focus on fixing "gaps in the infrastructure of how nations deal with crises," he said. "I hope you will see that this is a meeting that advances the agenda we jointly care about. But it is one step in an ongoing crisis."

A Christian organization that seeks to end world hunger has developed an interfaith study guide for the G-20 summit. "The G-20 Pittsburgh Summit: Reflections for People of Faith" can be downloaded from www.bread.org, the Web site of Bread for the World. The organization will lobby G-20 leaders to make decisions that bring benefits of the global economy to the world's poorest people. They will urge delegates to keep promises the G-20 has already made. These include ending corruption and secrecy in key international lending organizations and increasing the money that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund make available to entrepreneurs in the poorest nations.

A new encyclical on Catholic social teaching will soon be released as Pope Benedict's response to the current economic crisis. The encyclical, "Caritas in veritate" (Charity in Truth), has been in preparation for more than two years, but was delayed because the pope wanted it updated to respond to the world financial crisis. It could be published as early as June 29 if the various translations are finished.

Conservatives will be shocked and disappointed by the encyclical, which will reflect Benedict's skepticism toward unbridled capitalism based on greed.

As we look ahead to recovery from the present financial and economic crisis, we must ask ourselves: Do we return to business as usual? Or is this a moment when a re-envisioning of the economy is both possible and necessary? Some would argue that President Obama is already trying to change the social compact from an emphasis on opportunity to an emphasis on fairness. Others, however, look at the economic team the president has gathered and conclude that it includes the same Wall Street professionals who got us into this mess. Still others, myself included, think that the world will never be the same. The consumer-led growth of the past is not viable in a world where every country wants to have the same consumer society, because the demand on natural resources and the environmental strain would be too great. There is no single Catholic response to all of these issues, but Catholic social thought provides guidance for distinctive Catholic responses.

Pope Benedict XVI called for a new world economic culture that gives priority to solidarity, ethics and human dignity.

The crisis that has affected industrialized and developing nations alike shows that "certain economic-financial paradigms that have been dominant in recent years need to be rethought," he said June 13 to members of a papal foundation.

The pope spoke to members of the Centesimus Annus Foundation in a special Vatican audience at the conclusion of a conference in Rome on "Values and Rules for a New Model of Development."

He praised the group for seeking to promote a new economic model "that pays more attention to solidarity and is more respectful of human dignity," than the one that has led to the current crisis and increased disparity between rich and poor.

A few weeks before my first reporting trip to Darfur, the United Nations enacted an important new resolution on the prevention of genocide - stressing that "impunity for such crimes encourages their occurrence." Once in the country, I wrote with fair indignation that 160,000 people had been killed and as many as 100,000 others had been driven from their homes since the conflict began. The Bush administration was calling the mass killing "genocide." That was 2005. Now, four years later, the United Nations says as many as 300,000 people have died, and more than 2.5 million victims have lost their homes. Susan Rice, who frequently criticized the Bush administration's Darfur strategy, is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "I think when you've got genocide under way and the government is the perpetrator, there is a moral imperative to act," Rice said three years ago.

Although George W. Bush is a man without intellectual pretensions, his departure from office brings down the curtain on a distinctive era of American political thought. Ideas that recently qualified as smart have suddenly become passe. Propositions once alluringly au courant now appear not simply obsolete but absurd. The bubble of American triumphalism has burst. Proponents of triumphalism vied with one another in explaining the implications of these two notions. First out of the gate was the scholar Francis Fukuyama. Even before the Berlin Wall had fallen, Fukuyama rendered his verdict on the entire twentieth century: Democratic capitalism had won. For Fukuyama, this "triumph of the West" found expression "in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism," embodied above all by the United States. Fukuyama titled the essay that made him famous "The End of History?"-the question mark suggesting a lingering circumspection. Soon thereafter circumspection fell from favor. Certainty emerged as a triumphalist hallmark.

Reporting from Mexico City and San Salvador -- The murder 19 years ago of six Jesuit priests by a U.S.-trained army unit was the turning point in El Salvador's long civil war, an atrocity so grave that it helped force an end to the fighting. But the soldiers and officers convicted or implicated in the slayings are free under a controversial amnesty law that is receiving new attention thanks to election politics here and a potentially landmark court case in Spain. Human rights activists in the Americas and Europe said they hoped the Jesuit complaint could be used to fight impunity and bring justice to the victims' families by joining a procession of Spanish court cases that have forced Latin America to confront its violent past.

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.