Representatives of 14 Catholic organizations met with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team yesterday in Washington. The Catholic groups presented members of the transition team with a list of policy concerns in the areas of international development and trade, health care reform, immigration, domestic policy and poverty reduction, and the environment. The presentations and policy discussion that followed were based on "Platform for the Common Good," a consensus document that came from a convention the groups hosted this summer in Philadelphia called the "Convention for the Common Good." The Catholic groups gave the transition team copies of the document, which, they say, advocates policies that are "enlivened by the Gospel message of hope and the wisdom of Catholic social teaching."

Responding to concerns from their followers, a dozen interfaith leaders from across Metro Detroit announced Thursday they will conduct national lobbying to urge members of Congress to back loans for Detroit's Big Three auto manufacturers and set up an information network about the social services they provide. "Some of us have larger, national denominations and we can contact those members of Congress who are straddling the fence," said Bishop Charles Ellis of Greater Grace Temple in Detroit. "We can use our constituents in those communities to influence those people." The leaders gathered at the behest of Cardinal Adam Maida and said they were troubled by the worries, indeed the near panic, expressed to them by many of their followers about the economy in Metro Detroit.

As the roster of corporations and financial institutions in line for government bailouts seems to grow, some public-policy advocates in Washington are calling on policymakers to focus more efforts on the nation's poorest. The ranks of the destitute are growing quietly but alarmingly as much of the world focuses on troubles surrounding Wall Street. "Recent data show poverty is already rising quite substantially," says Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "There is a strong potential for more hardship and destitution than we have seen in this country in a number of decades."

On the heels of the U.S. bishops' recent declaration that abortion remains their top political priority, Pope Benedict XVI this morning issued a reminder that children already born, especially those who suffer from poverty, disease and war, must also have a place within the church's ambit of concern. While Benedict clearly affirmed the dignity of human life from the moment of conception, his remarks suggest a desire that the church's opposition to abortion not exclude other pressing social concerns. The pope spoke this morning to participants in a Nov. 13-15 conference organized by the Pontifical Council for Assistance to Health Care Workers, on the theme of "Pastoral Care of Sick Children." Benedict noted that every year, some four million newborn children die around the world at less than 26 days after birth, often due to poverty, poor health care systems, and armed conflict. He called that a matter of "urgent" concern.