Italy

Pope to make first pilgrimage

Pope Benedict XVI is making his first pilgrimage today since becoming pontiff, following in the much-traveled footsteps of his predecessor.

The trip to Bari will last only a few hours, but it marks Benedict’s first pastoral visit in Italy since his April 19 election as the 265th leader of the Catholic Church. The city is home to the relics of the St. Nicholas, the fourth-century saint who remains one of the most popular in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Archbishop Francesco Cacucci of Bari told Vatican Radio this week that it was significant that Benedict was making Bari his first pastoral visit to close a conference on the centrality of the Sunday Eucharist.

“When John Paul II came to Bari in 1984, he called Bari the ‘bridge to the East’ precisely because of the relics of St. Nicholas,” Cacucci said. “So if Sunday is the central day in the life of Catholics, we know that it’s also so for the Orthodox world.”

Pope John Paul II was the most-traveled pope in history, making 104 foreign pilgrimages and 146 pastoral visits in Italy during his 26-year papacy.

Benedict has indicated he too will travel.

Saudi Arabia

King said to be stable, suffering pneumonia

King Fahd was in stable condition Saturday with an apparent case of pneumonia, officials said, as Saudis prayed for the health of the ruler who brought the oil-rich kingdom closer to the United States during more than two decades as monarch.

The elderly king’s health was the main topic of discussion wherever people gathered in the Saudi capital, a day after he was hospitalized for officially unspecified reasons.

The king’s half brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, has been Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader since Fahd, king since 1982, suffered a debilitating stroke in 1995 that confined him mainly to a figurehead role. He is expected to become king if Fahd dies.

The crown prince presided over a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Saturday, seeking to maintain a business-as-usual image.

But Saudi Arabia’s strategic importance as the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves and the home of Islam’s two holiest shrines means even a stable succession could affect world markets and have widespread political fallout.

A Saudi royal office statement read on television Saturday night said the king “had undergone the necessary medical tests and all these tests had proven that his health condition, thank God, is stable and reassuring.”

Zimbabwe

Capital calm despite big hike in food prices

Major increases in the price of staple foods went into effect Saturday as President Robert Mugabe, who recently refused assistance claiming the country had a bumper harvest, acknowledged that Zimbabwe needs food aid to avert famine.

The price hikes – 51 percent for maize meal and 29 percent for bread – came days ahead of a meeting with James Morris, World Food Program chief, to discuss Zimbabwe’s massive food aid requirements despite its longstanding claims it was self-sufficient.

Zimbabwe’s economy has slowly collapsed since Mugabe introduced his land reform program and confiscated white-owned farms, beginning five years ago. Zimbabwe’s once thriving agricultural sector, which made it the regional bread basket, is destroyed.

Still, Saturday’s price hikes, announced on state radio, were taken with apparent resignation in Harare, where residents had fought running battles with police last week as paramilitary squads torched and bulldozed roadside shops and hundreds of homes.

Tens of thousands of people were arrested or left homeless in the midwinter cold.

Egypt

Infant leaves hospital after 2nd head removed

A baby girl who underwent surgery to remove a second head that was sharing a blood vessel with her brain has been released from the hospital, her doctors said Saturday.

Manar Maged was born March 30, 2004, with a rare birth defect, craniopagus parasiticus, that occurs when an embryo begins to split into identical twins but fails to complete the process, leaving an undeveloped conjoined twin in the womb. Manar also has a healthy twin sister.

There were 10 previous cases like Manar’s throughout the world when she underwent surgery on Feb. 19, and Manar was the only one to have survived the procedure, Hefnawi said.

Manar slept in her mother’s arms as the hospital’s doctors applauded the news.