WASHINGTON (CNS) — Attacks by Arab militiamen against black Africans in the Darfur region of Sudan continued even after the United States accused the Sudanese government of committing genocide, a human rights and aid official said. "There are daily reports of attacks; it never stops," said Omer Ismail, program director of Darfur Peace and Development. Ismail’s organization, based in Washington and Darfur, helped prepare the reports that led to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Sept. 9 Senate testimony that the situation in Darfur was genocide. Ismail told Catholic News Service the declaration of genocide was a "positive development," but that "this was something that should have been declared a long time ago."

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNS) — Citing possible harmful effects on the poor, Latin American bishops pledged to help grass-roots groups have an effective voice in free trade agreements being promoted in the Western Hemisphere. As currently structured, free trade agreements tend to favor multinational companies, the economic elites in Latin America and the industrialized countries, said a statement by the Department of Justice and Solidarity of the Latin American bishops’ council. Landless rural farmworkers, small businessmen, women, youths, the elderly and the handicapped often lose out under such agreements, said the document. The four-page statement was written after an Aug. 10-13 meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope John Paul II and top Vatican officials met with Israeli Interior Minister Avraham Poraz to discuss the church’s ongoing difficulties in Israel. The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, secretary of relations with states, met in the Vatican Sept. 14 with Poraz, together with Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See Oded Ben-Hur and other Israeli officials. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the talks centered on issues directly under the interior minister’s jurisdiction, including entry visas to Israel for church personnel and the tax-exempt status of the church.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — At a forum sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., addressed public policy concerns ranging from poverty to peace, abortion to marriage, racism to immigration, workers’ rights to public aid for private schools. Bishop Gregory, the first African-American bishop to be president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was one of five religious leaders who spoke at the Sept. 10 forum, "Great Voices of Faith in a Time of Crisis," held as part of the caucus’ 34th annual legislative conference in Washington. "As a matter of faith," he said, "the Catholic Church is concerned for the good of every human person and teaches that every person’s dignity is God-given and inalienable. ... Whatever the failings of individual Catholics, Catholic teaching embodies the highest values to which society must aspire if it is to be fully human."

GALLUP, N.M. (CNS) — In the basement of St. Francis School in Gallup, a 28-year-old woman waited while her husband completed an application for a Mexican government identification card. Her husband hoped to be among the thousands of undocumented Mexicans in New Mexico allowed to use the identification to obtain a driver’s license. Since March 2002, Mexican consulates throughout the United States have been aggressively promoting "matriculas consular," or Mexican identification cards. The cards are considered a valid source of identification that undocumented Mexican immigrants can use to open bank accounts at 160 banks nationwide or to obtain a driver’s license in one of 13 states which recognize the card for that purpose.

NEW YORK (CNS) — The naming of a new center of a Catholic hospital in New York for former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has raised questions in light of the U.S. bishops’ policy of refusing honors to politicians who support legal abortion. Ground was broken Sept. 1 for the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. In a statement adopted June 18 at a special assembly in Englewood, Colo., the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declared, "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."