Global

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle at a Mass for Jonas Burgos and other missing activists warned abductors that while they might escape human courts, they will eventually have to answer to God.

"I appeal to those who are holding Jonas and the many others whose mothers are still searching for fathers, siblings, children: You will face up to God," said Tagle at the end of his homily for the Mass in Quiapo Church on Thursday ahead of the sixth anniversary of Burgos' abduction.

Almost every evening at 6, the sounds of the organ resonate in the brick Catholic church on Kavaja Street. The hymns may vary, but the organist, Maria Dhimitri, is always the same.

It has been that way for nearly 23 years and could have been double that, Dhimitri said in a recent interview, if it had not been for a brutally enforced ban on religion in her country in southeastern Europe from 1967 to 1990.

"They banned all religious practice," the 76-year-old musician told Catholic News Service from an annex of Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle on his first Easter recollection as archbishop of Manila urged thousands of Filipino Catholics to serve in mission.

Pope Francis called on Venezuela's political leaders to resolve their differences through respectful dialogue and he urged the nation's people to reject all forms of violence as the country seeks to move ahead.

Venezuelans went to the polls April 14 to elect a successor to President Hugo Chavez, the socialist who died of complications from cancer March 5.

Members of the local organizing committee for World Youth Day say with the recent election of an Argentine pope, they expect up to 2.5 million young people at the international event in Rio de Janeiro.

"We currently have 200,000 pilgrims already registered, but registrations go on until the last day of the event," said Carol de Castro, press coordinator for the local organizing committee. She said the committee expects 800,000 pilgrims to have registered by the start of the event, which runs July 23-28.