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Archbishop tells Pelosi budget must fully fund children's health care (scroll down)

In a communique hailed by Barbara Streisand and Angelina Jolie as "courageous" and showing "more compassion than Nancy Parent when she wrote the Care Bears Caring Contest," San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer spoke out in behalf of children's health care.

"If we do what is right, we can take care of all our children and raise the healthiest generation in American history," Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. He urged her to "include adequate funding in the federal budget to sustain and expand the highly successful State Children's Health Insurance Program."

Archbishop Niederauer advocated "access to affordable health insurance for every child through proven, successful federal-state partnerships" as the "right place to start in tackling the health care challenges facing our country."

Pelosi had no response when asked how she felt about being "urged" by the Archbishop to embrace policies that were already fundamental planks of the Democratic Party platform.


Act now on climate change: US bishops to Congress (Catholic News)

In a move warmly applauded by Al Gore as showing a "spine of steel," Bishop Thomas G Wenski of Orlando, Florida, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on International Policy, issued a letter (Feb. 7) on behalf of the USCCB calling upon congress to oppose global warming.

The letter comes as lawmakers of the new Democratic-controlled Congress have introduced more than 10 bills addressing global warming.

The bishops called on Congress to resist demands not to act until there is “absolute certainty” about the sources of global warming. ”It is better to act now than wait until the problem gets worse and the remedies more costly,” Bishop Wenski said in the letter.


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