Massachusetts-based Caritas ends joint venture

Caritas Christi Health Care, the Catholic hospital system founded by the Archdiocese of Boston, is ending its joint venture with a Missouri-based health insurer. The move comes at the insistence of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, who has decided that the relationship represented too much of an entanglement between Catholic hospitals and abortion providers. The development is a setback for Caritas because it represents the undoing of one of the steps its new chief executive had announced as part of his effort to turn around the hospital system's finances.