Reuters: Papal peace appeal 02 January

Some 13,500 people packed the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday to welcome Pope Benedict XVI. President George W. Bush welcomed the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics on his historic visit to the United States and said America and the world need his "message of hope." Images and soundbites.

The pontiff also urged people in modern societies to accept the "light of Christ" and warned that many human tragedies are being caused by environmental upheavals.

Pope Benedict XVI arrived at a baseball stadium here Thursday to celebrate mass with tens of thousands of Catholic faithful. Waving to the estimated crowd of 48,000 from his "pope-mobile," the pontiff did a lap of the new Washington Nationals stadium ahead of the first public mass of his six-day visit to the United States.

It was the first meeting between a Pope and a Saudi monarch, custodian of two of Islam's holiest shrines. The Vatican wants greater rights for the some 1 million Catholics who live in the Saudi Arabia, most of them migrant workers who are not allowed to practice their religion in public. At the end of the meeting, the king gave the Pope a gold and silver sword studded with precious jewels, in keeping with a bedouin custom the Saudis follow when foreign leaders visit their country. The king also presented Benedict with a small silver and gold statue depicting a palm tree and a man riding a camel.

The freight train carried raw materials to an industrial park in the North which is operated by the South. South Korea restored the tracks across the land-mine strewn border but had struggled to win approval from the isolated North, still nervous of any contact with the outside world.

Pope Benedict XVI on Friday kicked off a landmark visit to the United Nations with private talks with UN chief Ban Ki-Moon ahead of a speech focusing on human rights and multilateralism. The 81-year-old pontiff met with Ban for about 30 minutes and later headed to the packed hall of the 192-member General Assembly for his address.

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday berated US bishops for their poor handling of the child sex scandal that has rocked the Roman Catholic church, but laid part of the blame on the breakdown of values in US society. Benedict told a gathering of bishops they had "sometimes very badly handled" the decades-old problem of pedophile priests. But he urged efforts "to address the sin of abuse within the wider context of sexual mores.

Exultant throngs outside St. Peter's receive the signal from the Cardinal's conclave in the Sistine Chapel that a new Pope has been chosen. Elevated to the Papal lThrone is Cardinal Roncalli, who adopts the name of John XXIII. One of his first acts, after giving his benediction to the rejoicing thousands, is a plea for peace.

Pope Benedict XVI Friday launched a spirited defense of human rights and multilateralism, and called for greater dialogue between cultures in a landmark address to the UN General Assembly. Dressed in his white robes, the 81-year-old pontiff reminded all 192 UN member states of their duty to protect their people from human rights abuses.