“The American people are tired of partisan bickering and want lawmakers to find common ground," said Sister Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association.

Bishop Peter Kihara Kariuki of drought-afflicted Marsabit, Kenya, said his diocese has been struggling with the “deadly effects of global warming for years now.”

A Vatican statement said that church leaders recognized the sense of “pain and anger, betrayal, scandal and shame” that the crisis provoked.

Catholic Relief Services’ anti-hunger programs during 2008 helped an estimated 49.3 million people.

Homelessness appears to be making a comeback, but not in the urban and rural communities where it persisted in past decades.

Metals found in such everyday electronic items as mobile phones are helping to fund a bloody conflict in Congo.