WASHINGTON (CNS) — At an event in Detroit for last year’s Cover the Uninsured Week, Mercy Sister Mary Ellen Howard spoke about what it’s like at the St. Frances Cabrini Clinic of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church, which she directs.

"The telephone at Cabrini Clinic never stops ringing," she said. "And it’s story after story of despair."

A year later, the situation hasn’t gotten much better for the uninsured in Detroit — or any other U.S. city, for that matter.

The "magnitude and moral urgency" of the problems facing nearly 46 million uninsured Americans call Catholics to respond "with compassion and a commitment to justice," two Catholic leaders said in a letter for the 2006 Cover the Uninsured Week May 1-7.

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, N.Y., chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Policy, and Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who is president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, asked for support for the initiative, now in its fourth year, in a joint letter April 20.

During the week, "religious leaders, physicians, business owners, educators, union members and others are banding together to send a unified message: We cannot afford to remain silent while quality, affordable health care is not a reality for everyone in the country," the letter said.

Kathleen A. Curran, a policy adviser on health and welfare issues in the bishops’ Department of Social Development and World Peace, serves on the national interfaith advisory board for Cover the Uninsured Week.

"Catholic teaching sees access to health care as essential to the welfare of human beings," she told Catholic News Service.

Although there are also practical and economic implications to the crisis of the uninsured, "the starting point for us is the moral obligation" to resolve the problem, Curran said.

Sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and 18 national organizations ranging from the AFL-CIO and AARP to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Hospital Association, Cover the Uninsured Week aims to focus the nation’s attention on the plight of the uninsured, who often delay health care until an illness has become critical.

Events during the week include campus seminars, workshops for small business owners on how to provide health care for their employees, community health fairs and interfaith breakfasts or prayer services. Individuals are encouraged to write a letter to the editor about the problem, share their own stories about being without health insurance or volunteer at a local clinic.

Liturgical resources developed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and available online at www.usccb.org/sdwp/aboutctuw.htm include homily helps corresponding to the Sunday readings before and after the week; suggested prayers of the faithful; a prayer for the sick; and a "A Call to Care for Americans Living Without Health Insurance" from Curran and other members of the advisory board.

"Because faith communities have prayed for the sick, visited the hospitalized, comforted the dying and their loved ones, and founded hospitals, today we proclaim the call to care for our nation’s nearly 46 million uninsured people," the interfaith leaders said. "Because faith communities have led the way in seeking just and compassionate public policies, today we proclaim the call to care for our nation’s nearly 46 million uninsured people."

Two reports made public April 26 offer some frightening statistics.

"Gaps in Health Insurance: An All-American Problem," released by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, showed that 41 percent of working-age Americans with annual incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 were uninsured for at least part of 2005. That was a huge increase from the 28 percent it found in 2001.

A survey conducted for the report also found that two-thirds of those lacking health insurance live in families where at least one member works full time.

"The jump in uninsured among those with modest incomes is alarming," said Karen Davis, Commonwealth Fund president and a co-author of the report. "If we don’t act soon to expand coverage to the uninsured, the health of the U.S. population, the productivity of our workforce and our economy are at risk."

A separate report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation disputed the view that the uninsured are overwhelmingly young and healthy.

One in six adults between the ages of 50 and 64 — some 7 million people — have no health insurance, the foundation said. And the uninsured are less likely to receive recommended cancer screenings, and nearly twice as likely to report being in "poor" or "fair" health than those with health insurance.