I can't say I was surprised, but one always hopes.

A couple of years ago, while I was doing research for a lecture, I kept meticulous track of the major news sources in the U.S. for one straight week. I wanted to see the relationship between the news reported by Catholic news organizations and those reported by mainstream media.

What I found confirmed my worst fears. While Catholic media had reported ten major news stories (including the conclusion of an international meeting of cardinals in Rome, the sending of two papal envoys to Jerusalem as peace mediators and the arrests of several women religious at a peaceful protest against the School of the Americas), the mainstream media reported on only five stories which tangentially dealt with Catholic issues. Their stories covered the Internet and its religious uses, denominationally segmented stock investments and one ubiquitous scandal case, this time in Africa. None of the other stories had made the news.

Putting aside the issues of sensationalism and pandering to ratings that we have come to associate with contemporary news, the effect of this selective reporting was one of a studied and complete indifference. This kind of news coverage reinforced the view that religion has no place in the real world, and what's more it served to divide and isolate Catholics around the world from one another.

As a world church, what happens in our local communities has the potential to reach, inspire and help our sisters and brothers throughout the planet. Conversely, seeing the world-dimensions of our catholicity is necessary to inform and energize our local efforts.

So it was that during January I watched to see if two events of significance to Catholicism's role in the world as a voice for justice and peace would be covered by the U.S. press. I searched carefully, but the only coverage I found was from the Spanish language supplement of The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald.

I cannot single-handedly undo this isolation that our media forces upon the U.S., but I can give us a taste of what we have been missing. Over this and my next column I am going to bring you these two stories, stories that prove that the Roman Catholic Church's prophetic role is alive and well in the world.

The first story has to do with two presidents, two administrations that transitioned smoothly from one party to another, without bloodshed and without riots, in a world where those are very rare.

It happened in Brazil, a land almost as vast as the U.S. and with a population nearing 200 million, 80 percent of whom are Catholic. The University of Notre Dame, recognizing that "far-sighted leaders have been crucial for economic prosperity, social well-being, and good government in Latin America," chose to present its 2004 Notre Dame Award for Distinguished Public Service in Latin America to the past and present Presidents of Brazil. It was front page news all over Brazil, and the picture was eloquent: on one side former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the other his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, between them a priest, Notre Dame President Rev. Edward A. Malloy, CSC.

Here was inspiration, a recognition given by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame, a center best known for research on the prospects for democracy in Latin America and around the world, to the two Latin American heads of state who had achieved the first democratic transition of a government in Brazil since the early 1960s. The award was meant to celebrate, support and call attention to something that was not business as usual, to the courageous work of justice that gives fruit in the harvest of peace.

"Though they represent opposing political parties," said Father Malloy, "Lula and Cardoso cooperated as statesmen to produce elections that were clean, fair and widely praised for avoiding political divisiveness or demagoguery." As Notre Dame reported, "Lula's 'high-road' campaign and landslide victory, together with Cardoso's even-handed management of the electoral process, yielded Brazil's historic democratic transition."

Here was a lesson for the whole world. Notably absent in the Latin American press coverage were the usual U.S. qualms about the separation of Church and State, or any questions of "what are religious leaders doing involved in politics?" The Brazilian people, their press and leaders seemed to understand what the church had stated so eloquently in Communio et Progressio (The Pastoral Instruction on the Means of Social Communication, 1971): "The church does not speak and listen to her own members alone; her dialogue is with the whole world." I am not much for football, but this is one time when I could really say, "Touchdown for Notre Dame!"

Now, back to our original problem. Great things are being done in the name of the Catholic faith around the world, things that are meant to instruct, inspire and celebrate a human spirit which triumphs, which is just, and which ultimately loves as Jesus commanded. Media organizations, interested in selling products, do not see any reason to communicate this work, this vision. In the end, silence is imposed upon the church's relationship with the world and with its members; I for one think this is not tolerable.

What can we do? For one thing we can read the alternative press --- media produced for minority communities, such as Spanish language, Asian or African-American media --- in the hope that this media will want to serve its constituencies with a broader range of news.

For another thing, we can let mainstream media know, through organizing at our parishes, letters, and phone calls, that we want to know what happens in the rest of the world. That it is not the news of war and scandal that interests us, but news of hope.

Finally, as we live our lives, we can become walking examples of a dialogue of church and world in the way our faith informs our actions.

In my next column, the astounding courage of the Venezuelan Bishops Conference.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu writes from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.