News Briefs

Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Communications, surprised America’s church correspondent Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M., with the prestigious St. Francis de Sales Award from the Catholic Press Association in Albany on March 12. • On March 12 a human rights group reported at least 500 confirmed cases of Christian and Hindu girls kidnapped by Muslims and forced to marry over the past 18 months in Pakistan. • Faith-based investors cheered PNC Financial Services’ decision in early March to cease financing coal-mining firms’ major mountaintop removal ventures in Appalachia. • Jean Vanier, an advocate for people with developmental disabilities who helped create L’Arche, an international network of residential communities, was awarded the $1.7 million Templeton Prize on March 11. • The Brussels-based International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity, or Cidse, an international consortium of Catholic aid agencies, charged on March 9 that European businesses were causing suffering and death by importing minerals from the world’s conflict regions.