Shutting down foster program
Chicago Tribune (registration site)
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago will close their foster program, responsible for more than 900 children in Cook and Lake Counties, on June 30 after a $12 million lawsuit payout related to abuse by a foster parent prompted the agency's insurer to drop its coverage. The foster care program, which is one of the oldest and largest such programs in the state, is shutting down after 90 years, a move that is sending shock waves through the child welfare system. Experts say that losing an agency like Catholic Charities, which has a long history of finding foster homes for children around the nation and monitoring their progress, is an ominous sign of the future of relationships between insurance companies and non-profits.

No fear of death
BBC
Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube says he accepts that his opposition to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe may cost him his life. The archbishop called for mass street protests in March and said people must be prepared to stand in front of "blazing guns" to force President Mugabe from power. The country is experiencing the world’s highest rate of inflation, 1,700 percent, and little is being done by the government to help its people.  

Pope John Paul II not perfect, but a saint
Beliefnet.com
Those who say Pope John Paul II shouldn’t be made a saint because he was against such causes as the ordination of women and those who say he was flawless so should be made a saint are both wrong, say Jesuit Father James Martin. “Even though I disagreed with some of Pope John Paul's positions ... for me the late pope was clearly a saint. Not simply because of his well-catalogued achievements, but also because of his astonishing personal faith, nurtured in the pious atmosphere of early 20th-century Polish Catholicism, forged in the terrors of mid-century Nazi and Communist rŽgimes and, finally, allowed to blossom, like a tall tree, for the good of the late-century world,” the priest writes.