President Obama urged Democrats and Republicans to not question one another’s motives and to make an effort to move beyond the cynicism and skepticism that has weighed down the politics of Washington, saying: “Civility is not a sign of weakness.”

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Franciscan Sr. Kathie Uhler has for months been working on a series of panel presentations to the United Nations that will show the damage exploitative mining has had on the indigenous populations of countries like Peru, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

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A year ago, President Obama thrilled many religious Americans and worried some secular supporters by announcing that he would not only keep the faith-based infrastructure President Bush had constructed across the government but would expand it, adding a marquee council of faith leaders to advise him.

But as the council prepares to end its first term and issue its report, some faith leaders across the ideological spectrum -- including some Obama allies -- say the operation may be more about window dressing than results.

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For more than 150 years, St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan has been a beacon in Greenwich Village, serving poets, writers, artists, winos, the poor and the working-class, and gay people.

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Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday blamed indifference as the fundamental cause of hundreds of millions of deaths in the world from lack of food, water and medicine.

Benedict chose justice and injustice as the theme of his Lenten message released by the Vatican on Thursday in several languages.

Lent, a period of reflection and penitence in the Roman Catholic church, begins this year on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 17. Benedict said this Lenten season he wants people to reflect on what justice really means for human beings.

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Health and medical malpractice insurance companies would lose an antitrust exemption they've enjoyed since 1945 under a bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Betsy Markey.

The bill is on a fast track and headed for a House vote next week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office said.

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Peace activists are planning today to protest George W. Bush's visit here to speak and accept an award for his pro-life efforts at a Catholic summit.

It is "outrageous that he's receiving a pro-life award," said Sharon Tipton, an organizer of the protest with a group called the Orange County Peace Coalition, which she described as an umbrella group for other local peace organizations.

"It's an Orwellian irony because Bush has caused so many deaths with an illegal war," she said.

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The Obama administration and a Congress narrowly controlled by Democrats present both new challenges and new opportunities for Catholic pro-life advocates on Capitol Hill.

Sr. Carol Keehan, president and CEO of Catholic Health Association and a Daughter of Charity, said in an interview that pro-life advocates have faced different strategic challenges and priorities in recent Republican and Democratic administrations.

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Marie Violande Guerrier-Cavalier arrived in Florida from Haiti on Jan. 16, with little more than her feverish infant son, Marcley, his tiny legs in casts because of a birth defect. She left her husband and four other children behind, living in the yard outside their broken house.

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Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

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In a message embracing the evangelizing potential of digital media, Pope Benedict XVI asked priests around the world to use Web sites, videos and blogs as tools of pastoral ministry.

"The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more St. Paul's exclamation: 'Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel,'" the pope said in his message for the 2010 celebration of World Communications Day.

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Reporting from Grand Island, Neb. - Hawa Farah was living in Minneapolis three years ago making $8 an hour at a bakery when her fiance, Hussein Hussein, got a call about good jobs that paid better.

So the couple, like many Somali immigrants who follow work around the country, headed 600 miles southwest to Nebraska, state slogan: "The Good Life."

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The Obama administration is moving ahead with the development of new nuclear weapons components at three key weapons facilities at the same time it is conducting a sweeping review of U.S. nuclear weapons policies that could lead to further slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

For the moment, U.S. nuclear weapons policies appear to be running in contrary directions, and while some critics of U.S. nuclear policy are cautiously optimistic, they are also worried President Obama’s nuclear disarmament vision is not yet being supported by concrete policy actions.

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The pregnancy rate among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according to a report released Tuesday.

The pregnancy rate among 15-to-19-year-olds increased 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 -- the first jump since 1990, according to an analysis of the most recent data collected by the federal government and the nation's leading reproductive-health think tank.

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