The Vatican’s representative to the Holy Land is playing down the controversies that could mar a visit next week by Pope Benedict XVI.

A Jordanian hotel owner preparing a lunch for the pope spent five weeks coming up with a choice of five menus for the upcoming visit and is still agonizing over what could go wrong _ just as he did when John Paul II visited nine years ago.

The Israeli postal service has issued a dozen special stamps marking the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the Holy Land.

Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday he was sorry for the abuse and “deplorable conduct” of some church members at Canadian schools that aboriginals were forced to attend.

A group of Canadian aboriginals attended Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience on Wednesday before a private meeting where the pope was expected to express concern about the former policy of forced attendance of Indian children at Christian-run schools.

A banner across the main square in Jesus’ boyhood town condemns those who insult Islam’s Prophet Muhammad _ a message by Muslim hard-liners for Pope Benedict XVI during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land next month.

Pope Benedict XVI is demanding some “serious soul-searching” from those responsible for shoddy construction that has been blamed for many of the nearly 300 deaths in Italy’s earthquake.

Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the central Italian region ravaged by an earthquake early this month.

Pope Benedict XVI will visit the region in central Italy devastated by an earthquake that killed nearly 300 people.

Palestinians in a refugee camp near Bethlehem want to receive Pope Benedict XVI in what they say is the most fitting setting _ next to the towering cement wall that is part of Israel’s West Bank separation barrier and borders the camp on two sides.