News Briefs

While the United States has made tremendous progress in moving from a history of slavery toward racial justice, there is still much left to do, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta said during the Synod of Bishops for Africa. • More than 1,000 students from the District of Columbia assembled in Washington on Sept. 30 to urge members of Congress to support an endangered federal voucher program. • Two American couples, Frank and Julie LaBoda of Cross Plain, Wis., and John S. and Claire Grabowski of Maryland, were named to the Pontifical Council for the Family. • National leaders of the Catholic Church and Lutheran World Federation gathered in Chicago to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. • Pope Benedict XVI has named J. Russell Hittinger, a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Tulsa, to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. • Eustachius Kugler, a member of the Brothers of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God, was beatified on Oct. 4 at a Mass in Regensburg, Germany.