Catholic Cubans have strong lay networks, says Catholic News Service staff writer Patricia Zapor, but they still need and want "a little bit more of everything---more freedom, more services, more priests."

"How they relate to God and their fellow man, their diet, their exercise, their avoidance of tobacco and alcohol---all of that collectively contributes to longevity," says Loma Linda University public health professor Larry Beeson.

"People across the political spectrum, right to left, are beginning to wonder if we are committed to a mission whose success is dubious now at best because of the way we've defined it," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Does the US have a duty to act? Is it possible to somehow intervene in Syria and still do more good than harm? "Nothing is certain in human affairs," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a political and moral philosopher. Watch managing editor and guest host Kim Lawton's conversation with him.

"She had to have been the least naive nun that I can think of," says Kathryn Wat, curator of an exhibition of prints by graphic artist Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986) at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.

"Rick Santorum is a very particular kind of Catholic...A lot of Catholics don't see themselves in him, and a lot of people actually don't even know that he's Catholic. Most people assume he's an evangelical," says Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service.

"I feel the voice of God echoing from the mountains all over this place," says a Syrian Christian pilgrim visiting Deir Mar Musa, an ancient desert monastery in Syria reestablished by Jesuit priest Paolo Dall'Oglio.

Biblical scholar Elaine Pagels calls the Book of Revelation the "strangest" and "least understood" book in the Bible. "It's as though you take all of your nightmares about plague or destruction or war or torture or natural catastrophe, and you just wrap it into a huge single nightmare, and you get the Book of Revelation."

"America has an agenda for homosexuals in Uganda," says Pastor Joseph Serwadda, and accepting gay rights as human rights and human rights as gay rights "is going to be very tough on Africa."

Watch the Ash Wednesday ritual of the imposition of ashes as it was observed during the morning commute at the Dupont Circle metro station in Washington, DC by Julie Bringman, director of Sunday night ministries, and volunteers from Foundry United Methodist Church.

Working with communities of faith means "helping millions of Americans connect to the opportunity to serve vulnerable populations abroad."

Does allowing churches to worship in public schools create a constitutional problem, or is it an expression of religious freedom?

If the right to vote is sacred, and depriving someone of that right is morally wrong, then what to make of the tough new voter identification requirements being proposed across the country?

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah has been a strong advocate for expanding partnerships with faith-based groups. "We're a nation based on moral values, and when we express those values to communities around the world, we're showing them an America...with whom they want to partner and not fight," he says.

The Obama administration made a significant change in its policy on insurance coverage of contraception by religiously affiliated organizations. Watch a conversation with managing editor Kim Lawton about the revised policy.

In Tennessee, young Christian teachers in Memphis public schools are trying to get children in poor neighborhoods on track to college. "Our Christian faith," says David Montague, director of the Memphis Teacher Residency program, "informs our belief that every child can learn."

"We don't want a religious state," says Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament Ossama Yassin. "We want a modern, civil, democratic state belonging to the people."

Madeleine L'Engle, who is Episcopalian, wrote widely about religion, science, art, theology, fantasy, faith, good, and evil, and she was a writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. She is the author of "A Wrinkle in Time," a popular young adult science-fiction novel.

Americans get most of their tomatoes from Florida, but the immigrants--many of them undocumented--who harvest them have to pick two and a half tons a day just to make the minimum wage. The hardships they endure have spurred a campaign to better their lives.

In two decades of fighting over Congo's vast mineral wealth, more than five million people have died, and the widespread sexual violence against women, committed by roving militias, has become an epidemic. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on HEAL Africa, a faith-based refuge for women that has trained some thirty doctors, who provide the only emergency care in eastern Congo.