BOB ABERNETHY: Now, the Catholic Church and just wages. The Vatican preaches fair salaries for everyone, but Church officials admit they often cannot pay their teachers and health care workers the wages they deserve. In Chicago, for instance, teachers in Catholic schools sometimes make just half what public school teachers earn. Part of the problem is the disappearance of sisters, who used to teach for almost nothing. There's no endowment for the schools and virtually no government help. But the archdiocese does not want to raise tuition so high only the rich can afford them. From Chicago, Judy Valente has our story on the effects of the Church's own just wage problem.

JUDY VALENTE: Laurel Martin and Genevieve Baisley share an apartment in Chicago. Both teach elementary school. In the suburban school district where she has taught for four years, Laurel earns $38,000 a year. Genevieve also has four years' experience, but she teaches in a Catholic school in the city. Her salary, $22,000.

Ms. GENEVIEVE BAISLEY (Teacher): My maximum that I can make on this current pay scale that's set up at Archdiocese of Chicago would be $31,000 a year after 30 years of experience.

VALENTE: Like schoolteachers, workers at Catholic hospitals and nursing homes are increasingly disgruntled over their wages and working conditions.

Ms. KIM BOBO (Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice): The people who work in these institutions are often women, they're often the poor, they're often immigrants. They're people that we say we care about, but, in fact, the wages are low, the benefits are often terrible. And people, when they try to organize, have problems.

We all have dichotomies in our life between what we say and what we do, and the same is true in religious institutions.

VALENTE: The Church has a dilemma. Increasingly, Catholic schools, hospitals, and nursing homes are coming under attack for failing to pay a living wage and resisting attempts to unionize. But every pope for the last 100 years has promoted a worker's right to unionize, and the U.S. Bishops have called on corporations to ensure economic justice, stressing the Church itself must set the example.

But the Church can't. When office janitors in Chicago went on strike earlier this year, they sought the support of Roman Catholic clergy.

Ms. BOBO: As we talked to clergy around the city, they were often -- I mean, almost to a person, they said, "I completely support these janitors. It's -- they absolutely deserve better wages and benefits. But I'm embarrassed. I can't come forward and say I support them because I know how poorly we pay our own janitors."

VALENTE: Schools are no different. Genevieve Baisley teaches at St. Mary of the Woods in a comfortable neighborhood on the city's Northwest Side.

Do you think you're paying these people a just salary?

Father GREG SAKOWICZ (Pastor): No. In my heart, we need to pay them more.

Ms. BAISLEY: I attended Catholic schools my entire life. I also wanted to be a teacher, and I felt like I wanted to give back to the Catholic schools for all that I have received from them. And my spiritual side, my foundation of who I am was based upon my experience in the Catholic school.

VALENTE: A generation ago, most of the teachers here were nuns. Housed and fed by their religious order, they were paid $30 a month. Now, except for the principal, all the teachers are laypersons who must support themselves.

Ms. BAISLEY: To supplement my income, I house-sit, I baby-sit, I tutor, I teach after-school program classes, plus I teach a full-time teaching position. So I'm very busy.

VALENTE: At age 28, Genevieve Baisley is still unable to save any money, so she is leaving St. Mary of the Woods to teach in a public school.

Fr. SAKOWICZ: That bothers me and also breaks my heart that we are losing good teachers to go elsewhere; that our loss will be someone else's gain.

VALENTE: The turnover is so high that last year the Chicago archdiocese launched a radio and print campaign to attract teachers to its schools. Because the schools want to keep tuitions low, they depend upon church collections to make ends meet.

Fr. SAKOWICZ: The tuition for one child does not cover the entire cost for the education of a child. Without the Sunday envelope, without the money for tuition, we'd close down. We depend on their generosity.

Father JOHN PAWLIKOWSKI (Catholic Theological Union): Catholics are the poorest givers, and this is a real concern. And, again, I think it's the legacy of sort of the nickel-and-dime collections, which was the only thing possible when you had an immigrant population that simply couldn't afford -- a blue-collar population that couldn't afford more.

VALENTE: This year St. Benedict's Parish on Chicago's North Side got $4.5 million from an anonymous donor, who stipulated the money be used only for an additional school building. In addition, the pastor has raised $1.4 million to renovate the church, but teachers' salaries will remain the same.

Father ROBERT HEIDENREICH (Pastor): We pay the salary to the teachers as the pay scale is dictated to us from downtown. So we can't -- we are not free to pay teachers more than the archdiocese dictates.