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WASHINGTON – Catholic organizations have joined with a variety of medical, civic, labor and other religious groups in calling on Congress to increase funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, despite a threatened veto by President George W. Bush. Representatives of nearly three dozen organizations participated in a July 25 Capitol Hill news conference organized by the Catholic Health Association, which also released a new public opinion poll that showed Americans overwhelmingly support the program known as SCHIP.

TIERRA BLANCA, Mexico – On a recent evening at the Guadalupe Migrant Shelter, the atmosphere was festive: Volunteers joked, played guitars and loaded enormous steaming pots of beans and rice into the back of a pickup truck. Then they were off, heading to the dusty railroad tracks that pass through the center of this sweltering city in southern Mexico. Word had it that a train would arrive around midnight with hundreds of unauthorized passengers, Central American migrants who jumped on the rail cars near Mexico’s southern border and hitched a ride north toward the United States and its plentiful jobs.

AURONZO, Italy – Faith and reason, mercy and the defense of the truth, dialogue and evangelization were just some of the topics Pope Benedict XVI touched on when he responded to questions posed by the priests of two northern Italian dioceses. After meeting privately with about 400 priests July 24, Pope Benedict told the crowd waiting outside, “We spoke about God, about the church, about humanity today and, mostly, about the fact that we are the church and in this journey we must all collaborate.”

WASHINGTON – Since 1899, a Franciscan monastery in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington has been a popular stop for pilgrims who want a glimpse of the Holy Land. The grounds of the monastery feature dozens of replicas of significant Christian sites from Europe and the Holy Land, including many surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The friars of Mount St. Sepulcher Franciscan Monastery and Commissariat of the Holy Land represent the Christian interest in the Holy Land, and it shows in the beauty of their church and the surrounding gardens.

Clutching rosaries and holding signs in support of the sanctity of life, 12 Catholics stood on the sidewalk outside an Overlea shopping center July 21 and peacefully asked God to end abortion. As cars whizzed by along Belair Road, the middle-aged men and women recited the rosary and the chaplet of divine mercy – standing within walking distance of a women’s health center that provides abortions.