News Briefs

Radio Soleil, the Catholic radio station in Haiti, resumed broadcasting on Jan. 24 from a makeshift studio in the back of a van parked in the hills above Port-au-Prince. • Working to ensure proper nutrition for all means bringing dignity to human lives and should be a top priority, Pope Benedict XVI said in a speech on Feb. 6 welcoming Alfonso Roberto Matta Fahsen, Guatemala’s new ambassador to the Vatican. • The costs of not enacting health care reform this year are “too dire” to permit that to happen, says Carol Keehan, a member of the Daughters of Charity who is president and chief executive office of the Catholic Health Association. • As the 30th anniversary of the murder of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero approaches, El Salvador’s bishops have agreed to write a letter to the Vatican supporting Romero’s canonization in an effort to move the process forward. • St. Vincent’s, the last surviving Catholic general hospital in New York City, is enmeshed in a struggle to keep its doors open and fulfill its mandate to serve the sick poor. It inherited $700 million of debt after merging in 2000 with seven other Catholic hospitals in the metropolitan area.