Facing a growing humanitarian crisis after the largest earthquake in Haiti in two centuries, Catholic aid agencies and world governments were boosting efforts to respond to the needs of hundreds of thousands of injured and homeless. Agencies such as Jesuit Refugee Service and Catholic Relief Services as well as smaller organizations from around the world have raised millions of dollars to provide medical services, feed and shelter people and head off the rapid spread of disease.

The Obama administration on Monday laid out a human rights agenda that recognized the limits of American authority: emphasizing the need for change within countries, defending engagement with adversaries like Myanmar and Iran and asserting that differences with big countries like China and Russia are best hashed out behind closed doors. "We must be pragmatic and agile in pursuit of our human rights agenda, not compromising on our principles, but doing what is most likely to make them real," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a wide-ranging address at Georgetown University.

Poverty, famine and disease overseas lead to lawlessness, instability, revolution and terrorism that threaten American interests, and Americans, at home and abroad. That's why our second most important means of self-defense after the military is foreign aid. Moreover, our investments in development pay off when poor countries become prosperous enough to become trading partners. To their credit, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton realize this, and repeatedly have said as much -- they just don't appear to be in a great hurry to put that philosophy into practice.

United Nations health officials estimate about 4 million people who need AIDS drugs worldwide are now getting them, according to a report issued Wednesday. The figure represents a major increase in rolling out the drugs to patients across Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is focused, but an estimated 5 million or more across the globe are still waiting for the drugs.

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.

Pope Benedict XVI asked leaders of the world's wealthiest countries to "listen to the voice of Africa" and poor countries during their summit in Italy. The global economic crisis threatens not only to derail efforts to end extreme poverty in the world, but also could plunge other countries into ruin as well, the pope said in a July 4 letter to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, host of the Group of Eight summit. The only way to find solutions that will match the global dimensions of the crisis and have long-term positive effects for all peoples is to "listen to the voice of Africa and the countries least-developed economically," the pope said in his letter. The G-8 summit July 8-10 in L'Aquila, Italy, was to bring together the heads of governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The global economic recession is reversing years of progress in reducing extreme poverty - a stark message that leaders from developing nations, in particular Africa, will take to this week's Group of 8 summit of wealthy countries in Italy. Underlying the alarm over a rising tide of poverty, infant mortality, and hunger is the criticism that wealthy nations have not honored their commitments to substantially increase global aid. The complaint - from developing country leaders as well as international institutions such as the World Bank and prominent aid advocates such as Bob Geldof - is that while the world's wealthy have found trillions of dollars to rescue private companies and financial institutions, they have cut back on aid to the poor. "The very real risk is of G-8 countries going back on the [aid] commitments they made because of the economic crisis," says Sue Mbaya, director of Africa advocacy for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization with worldwide reach.

The Global Health spending plan unveiled by President Obama last week would break new ground in treating children's infectious diseases, even as it falls short of campaign promises for major increases in overseas funding for HIV/AIDS. Advocates for more AIDS spending have criticized the president, but United States can save more lives for less money in developing countries by broadening its health safety net. The challenge will be to get Congress to approve the ambitious spending Obama has proposed. Obama has called for $63 billion for global health over six years, with $51 billion dedicated to the AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria program that President Bush initiated to great acclaim in 2003. Another $12 billion would help countries deal with diarrheal infections, infant pneumonia, and other diseases that lead to infant mortality.

Southern African leaders must stop supporting Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe or accept complicity in a "passive genocide," Catholic bishops from the region said Monday as the European Union increased sanctions on Mugabe and his supporters. Protesters calling for Mugabe to step down converged near the presidential guest house where the African leaders were holding an emergency summit on Zimbabwe's political crisis. They said police fired rubber bullets at them as they tried to gather in front of South Africa's capital building. The bishops said in a message to the heads of state that Mugabe must step down immediately and southern African officials "must stop supporting and giving credibility to the illegitimate Mugabe regime with immediate effect."