Today's Globe

Employees, patients, and community leaders said yesterday they are wary but hopeful after learning that the Caritas Christi Health Care system has agreed to be acquired by a New York private equity firm, while state regulators said the complicated approval process will probably stretch into the fall.

Hospitals in the Caritas Christi Health Care network have struggled in recent years to meet their mission to provide care to the poor, while making the improvements necessary to survive in a cutthroat and increasingly complex industry.

Cerberus Capital Management, the New York buyout firm that wants to turn Caritas Christi Health Care into a for-profit company, has no experience in running large medical systems.

Caritas Christi Health Care’s chief executive pledged yesterday that the chain’s pending sale to a private equity firm will help it to reduce costs in a state where medical spending, most of it on hospital services, has been climbing by 7.5 percent a year.

"Do you wonder how a hospital chain that has struggled on and off for so long as a nonprofit organization will be better off serving its patients and the financial interests of new private investors with a relatively high risk-high return slant to their portfolio? I do," columnist Steven Syre writes.

"Plans by  a private-equity buyer to convert Caritas Christi from a nonprofit into a for-profit — and put the six Caritas hospitals onto the tax rolls — came as good news this week to mayors in five local communities that play host to the long-troubled chain. But the attorney general and the state Supreme Judicial Court must first determine if the sale is in the public interest. Barring unforeseen disclosures, it is," a Globe editorial says.

Wings of Hope, a home for youngsters with disabilities high in the hills above Port-au-Prince, has developed close ties with a Catholic parish in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood and a school for disabled children in Lexington.

A lawyer for a South Shore father who is accused of killing his 4-year-old daughter with an overdose of psychotropic drugs, told jurors yesterday that the child’s psychiatrist is the only one responsible for the girl’s death.

A report appears to confirm the long-held suspicion that couples who are unable to have children of their own are willing to pay more for reproductive help from someone smart.

Congress put the final touches on a sweeping health care package last night, but the historic votes were clouded by the growing drama over threats to congressmen who voted for the package and the reaction from colleagues who tried to stop the bill.

A onetime priest who became an evolutionary geneticist and molecular biologist and helped scientifically refute creationism with his research was honored yesterday with one of the world’s top religion prizes.

Up to a third of breast cancer cases in Western countries could be avoided if women ate less and exercised more, researchers at a breast cancer conference said yesterday, renewing debate on a sensitive topic.

China has overtaken India as the global epicenter of the diabetes epidemic after a study showed twice as many Chinese are afflicted with the disease as previously estimated.