The Catholic conference said the proposal unfairly targets the church and other private institutions.

"The budget choices of Congress have clear moral and human dimensions," the bishops said.

"These people have no alternative but to entrust themselves to human smugglers who often treat them as meat," said one human rights worker.

Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone (left) was installed as the 13th bishop of the Charleston Diocese March 25.

The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life criticized a hasty public declaration of the excommunication of the girls mother and doctors.

Mauricio Funes (left), a journalist and proponent of liberation theology, was elected president of El Salvador on March 15.