News Briefs

Philippine Catholic leaders welcomed the release of a Philippine Red Cross worker who had been held by rebels for more than two months. Pope Benedict XVI had appealed to the captors on March 30 to release all three of the Red Cross workers they had kidnapped in January. • The president of the Colombian Catholic bishops conference has triggered controversy by calling for talks with Marxist rebels and warning against re-electing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.  In an interview published March 29 in the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo, Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez of Barranquilla said church leaders were "convinced that the conflict (with Marxist guerrillas) has no armed solution." • Pope Benedict XVI has decided the collection taken up at his Holy Thursday evening Mass will be used to help support the Catholic community in the Gaza Strip. • Ursuline Sister Dorothy Ann Kelly, who was provincial superior of her communitys Eastern U.S. province and former president of the College of New Rochelle, in New Rochelle, NY, died March 27. She was 79. • Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone (right) was installed as the 13th bishop of the Charleston Diocese March 25.