Donald E. Messer is a co-author of Ending Hunger Now. A United Methodist theologian, he is now executive director of the Center for Church and Global AIDS, which is based in Centennial, Colo.

Betty Gernert is a leader of Epiphany Ministry, a Christian ministry to incarcerated youths based in Danville, Ga.

Joe Benton is a special assistant for faith-base initiatives at the 7th District AME Church of South Carolina. In 2005, the church and the state’s department of juvenile justice signed an agreement to work together to benefit children in the state’s juvenile justice system or at risk of entering it.

The Rev. Richard H. Gentzler Jr. is director of the Center on Aging & Older Adult Ministries for the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church. The center provides resources and training for leaders of midlife and older-adult ministries. He’s the author of numerous books, including The Graying of the Church and Aging: God’s Challenge to Church and […]

See the text of Pope Benedict XVI’s Nov. 7, 2008, address on organ donation and defining death.

Read a Feb. 27, 2010, article from Kaiser Health News about a Catholic directive on end-of-life issues.

Pope Benedict XVI delivered an address to a Vatican conference on organ donation in which he said that “where certainty has not been reached the principle of precaution must prevail.” Read about the address in an Nov. 7, 2008, article posted by Reuters.

Catholic teaching on the definition of death and the ethics of organ harvesting appears to be in flux. In the latter half of 2008 the issue came to the fore when the Vatican newspaper published a front-page column calling for a re-examination of the definition of brain death. Read an article about the letter posted by the […]

Read a June 2, 2011, Catholic News Service story about the mid-June meeting of the Catholic hierarchy at which a document officially condemning physician-assisted suicide was up for discussion.