“Be assured, we are with you, with all the Japanese children who are suffering. We want to help you with our prayers, with our actions, and you can be sure that God will help you.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, from an April 22 pre-recorded TV broadcast in which he answered a question from a 7-year-old Japanese girl who lost friends in the recent earthquake and tsunami

“The current and future budget debate will involve hard choices and much shared sacrifice. . . . Whether to fund the largest abortion network in the country is not one of those hard choices.”
— Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, in a letter to Congress supporting a proposal to amend federal appropriations bills for the current fiscal year to exclude any funding for Planned Parenthood or its affiliates

“The meeting of needs for those who can’t meet their own is the gold standard for a moral economic system.”
— Daniel Finn, professor of economics and theology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., speaking in light of the political debate surrounding U.S. spending priorities