Hi Arbeo,
Wikinews has a bit of an unusual process. Individual Wikinews language editions have to meet much higher standards than, for example, Wikipedias to be launched. Currently, there are, by my count:
234 Wikipedias 173 Wiktionaries 121 Wikibooks 87 Wikiquotes 31 Wikisources 21 Wikinews
The procedure for creating a new Wikinews edition is at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition
As you can see from this page, there needs to be a minimum number of supporters, rather than just a consensus, to start a new edition. In addition, a new Wikinews edition has to translate certain documents before it is set up: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch
This is because a dead Wikinews is pretty useless, whereas a dead Wikiquote can still be useful if it contains at least a few pages.
Catalan meets these strict requirements. As for the open requests for other projects, when a consensus is clearly visible, talk to Brion, Tim or another developer on #wikimedia-tech, and ask them to set it up.
Erik