AP Digital News: Pope Leaves for 10-day Pilgrimage to Australia 12 July

Thousands of Cubans took part at the weekend in one of the island's most important religious rites, a pilgrimage to the El Rincon church to pay homage to Saint Lazarus. Some pilgrims weighed themselves down with concrete blocks and stones to make their journey to the church, 25 kilometres outside of Havana, more arduous. Many Cubans regard Lazarus as a mix between the Catholic saint and the Afro-Cuban deity Babalu-Aye. Saint Lazarus, often represented as a beggar in rags, is believed to cure people of their skin ailments, paralysis, amputations and HIV/AIDS.

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.

Former chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov was freed from jail on Thursday and warned that Russia was sliding toward dictatorship under President Vladimir Putin. Kasparov complained that he had been denied free access to a lawyer during the five days that he spent in a Moscow prison for taking part in an unauthorized rally at the weekend. Soundbites.

Pope Benedict XVI pleaded on Sunday for an end to sectarian hatreds as he became the first pontiff to pray at Ground Zero, where nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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.

The call comes after an activist said he was shot during a clash with Japanese whalers in Antarctic waters. Japan's fisheries agency said coastguard officials had only thrown "flash grenades," which are used for crowd control and are not regarded as weapons.

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.

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.

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.