The new American president.

As Judy Brown, president of the American Life League, confirmed for us, George Bush is not pro-life according to the regular standards. He has a number of exceptions to a full-fledged pro-life position. His cabinet, too, includes only one principled pro-lifer, John Ashcroft, who was confirmed on February 2, with a vote of 58 to 42, the second highest rate of opposition (all Democrats) to a new Cabinet appointment in U.S. history.

Yet the beginning of his term in office was very different in tone and temper from his predecessor's. Bush cut off American funding for abortion, contraception and related "family planning" programs in underdeveloped countries. If a bill to ban partial-birth abortions comes to him, he has made it clear that he will support it, not veto it as Bill Clinton did repeatedly.

Remarkably, he has proposed to channel some of the government's spending on social services to religious organizations. And a Bush appointment to the Supreme Court might well begin to tilt the balance against the 1973 Roe vs Wade pro-abortion ruling. So, Bush offers some hope to the pro-life position.

Rome--Among the 123 saints canonized by Pope John Paul on October 1, 2000, there was one who was a saint against racism. Katherine Drexel, from a wealthy Philadelphia family, devoted herself to missionary work among some of the poorest groups in the U.S., founding some sixty schools and the first Catholic university in the South which would Admit black students, Xavier University in New Orleans. To the congregation she founded, the Pope said, she taught "a spirituality based on a praying union with the Lord in the Eucharist and in the service of the poor and victims of racial discrimination."