VATICAN CITY - Lent is a time to shed lazy, un-Christian habits and snap out of one's apathy toward people harmed by violence, poverty and not having God in their lives, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis suggested the Catholic Church could tolerate some types of nonmarital civil unions as a practical measure to guarantee property rights and health care. He also said the church would not change its teaching against artificial birth control but should take care to apply it with "much mercy."

Perhaps we haven’t considered Lent in terms of opportunity. Most of us picture opportunity knocking in the form of a new job, a surefire investment, a vacation, an adventure. Fasting, penance, charity, prayer are given to us as duties, obligations, tasks.

VATICAN CITY - The Catholic Church needs to find a way to offer healing, strength and salvation to Catholics whose marriages have failed, who are committed to making a new union work and who long to do so within the Church and with the grace of Communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper told the world's cardinals.

VATICAN CITY - Those who recognize marriage as a sacrament, a divine blessing and a reflection of God's love for humanity should have even greater sympathy for husbands and wives whose relationships have failed, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY - In another strongly worded message to the Catholic hierarchy, Pope Francis told the Vatican body that vets nominees for bishops that they need to find him better candidates to send to dioceses around the world.

ROME - Vatican theologians have given their approval to a miracle attributed to the intercession of Pope Paul VI, moving him a step closer to sainthood.

In one of my favourite stories, four children travel to a secret country. On their second trip, they discover the ruins of a castle. Together they descend a dark, cold staircase into a vast underground chamber. Shining flashlights all round, they discover it’s filled with gems, jewels and treasures, all covered over with thick layers of dust.

Sometimes while presiding at the Eucharist or preaching, I scan the faces in the front pews. What do they reveal? A few are eager, attentive, focused on what’s happening, but a goodly number of faces, particularly among the young, speak of boredom, of dram duty and of a resignation that says: I have to be in the church just now, though I wish I was elsewhere.

VATICAN CITY - As the anniversary of his surprising resignation approaches, Pope Benedict XVI has rejected as “simply absurd” the speculation that he was forced to step down, and he said he still wears the distinctive white papal cassock for “purely practical reasons.”