NATION/WORLD

If you haven't been to confession recently, don't wait, Pope Francis told people at his weekly general audience. One may walk into the confessional with a heavy heart, but forgiveness brings freedom and lightness. "If a lot of time has passed, don't lose even one more day. Go," the pope said Feb. 19

Facing the truth about ourselves is not easy, Pope Francis told the faithful at a parish on the outskirts of Rome. He also spoke forcefully about the sin of gossip.

"The perfect family doesn't exist, nor is there a perfect husband or a perfect wife, and let's not talk about the perfect mother-in-law!" Pope Francis said to laughter and applause.

The octogenarian lovebirds come every year to celebrate World Marriage Day at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Married at La Placita Church in Los Angeles Nov. 25, 1951, 85-year-old Ralph Guerrero and his wife, Mary, 84, were the longest-married couple among 81 couples at the World Marriage Day Mass in English at the cathedral Feb. 9.

Despite claiming citizenship in both Canada and the United States, U.S.-born Sister Helena Burns always pulls for the maple leaf in international hockey. The 2014 Olympics will be no different.

Bishop Nevares will celebrate a Mass Feb. 16 at St. Anne Church in Gilbert to pray for the persecuted Christians of the Middle East.

Almost two weeks after the national March for Life rally in Washington, the Guttmacher Institute reported a 13 percent drop in national abortion rates from 2008 to 2011 -- making for the lowest rate since 1973 when abortion on demand was legalized in the U.S.

The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child continued to insist that the Vatican compile and publish detailed statistics on clerical sexual abuse of minors and that the pope, as head of the church, can and should order Catholic dioceses and religious orders around the world to implement all the policies of the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child.

As early on as it is for the pontificate of Pope Francis, his statements and actions already have given guidance for how simple changes can improve the world, said panelists at Georgetown University.

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- International law, the risk of using inhumane methods of execution and opposition to capital punishment by the survivors of murder victims...