More than 210,000 people worldwide contract Hansen’s disease each year, even though it is preventable, Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, reported on World Leprosy Day (Jan. 30). • South African Catholics prayed for the recovery of the 92-year-old anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela after he returned home following treatment for a respiratory infection. • Catholic missionaries are ready to set up faith communities in Bhutan after the predominantly Buddhist and Hindu country announced on Jan. 27 that it would accept the registration of Christians for the first time. • It is “unacceptable” to evangelize without addressing the urgent problems of poverty, injustice and oppression, Pope Benedict XVI said in a message released on Jan. 25 in preparation for World Mission Sunday next October • The Italian inventor Onorio Frati has devised an “electronic rosary,” a pocket-size egg-shaped gadget. • Catholic Relief Services’ international staff and their families in Cairo, Egypt, were evacuated to Jordan on Jan. 31 as pro-democracy demonstrations continued.
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The Rev. David Tracy, who died on April 29, was a monumental figure in American Catholicism, renowned as a teacher, scholar, writer and mentor to thousands of theologians.
The church and the bishops of the United States should lead the way in speaking against this bill and calling on Catholics to work for its defeat, writes Archbishop John C. Wester of Sante Fe.
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In processing the extent of the suffering, it is helpful to recall the foundational principle of our Catholic social teaching—that everyone possesses inherent dignity and the God-given right not just to survive, but to live well.