Two 19th-century nuns on Sunday became the first Palestinians to gain sainthood during an open-air mass celebrated by Pope Francis in St Peter's Square attended by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

The pontiff urged the faithful to follow the "luminous example" of the two 19th-century sisters and two others, from France and Italy, who were canonized along with them on a sunny spring morning.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI has ordered that laws restricting abortion be loosened, allowing it in the case of rape, incest, danger to the mother's health or fetal malformation.

Debate erupted in this North African kingdom earlier this year over reforming the penal code, which banned abortion except in cases of a threat to the mother's life. The king had his justice minister, religious affairs minister and the head of the state human rights organization study the issue.

About 2.7 million people have visited the September 11 museum in New York since it opened a year ago, museum officials said on its anniversary.

The visitors came from all 50 US states and 150 different countries to tour the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York, they said.

A Washington rabbi who admitted to setting up cameras to spy on women as they prepared for Jewish ritual baths was sentenced Friday to more than six years in prison, the Justice Department said. 

Bernard "Barry" Freundel, 63, was sentenced on 52 counts of voyeurism after pleading guilty in February to videotaping the women from 2009 to 2014.  

In the corner of a pristine Jerusalem church, the tomb of Marie Alphonsine Ghattas looks out over just a small part of her legacy, days ahead of her canonization in Rome.

A box under an altar holds her earthly remains, and Catholic worshippers have already scribbled prayers in Arabic to "Saint Marie Alphonsine", in a notebook placed next to her tomb in the chapel.

A painting by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian sold Thursday for $50.56 million at a Christie's auction in New York, the most ever paid for his work.

"Composition No. III, with Red, Blue, Yellow and Black," a geometric oil painting made in 1929, sold at an impressionist and modern art auction for more than twice its maximum estimated value, which Christie's said was between $15 million and $25 million.

A guitar played by George Harrison in the Beatles' early days, previously on display in a British museum, goes on auction in New York Friday, valued at $400,000 to $600,000.

The electric guitar is the two-day auction's star item, amid hundreds of possessions once owned by rock 'n' roll's biggest stars, which auctioneers hope will rake in millions.

In a cramped Bangkok room filled with statues of deities and plumes of incense smoke, a master is at work.

With expert precision Ajarn Neng repeatedly plunges a razor sharp needle dipped in black ink into the back of a disciple, each stab producing a perfectly placed pixel that forms a traditional Thai tattoo.

A state-approved Chinese church has issued a rare public criticism of proposed local government regulations on religious buildings, including limits on cross sizes, after a wave of church demolitions and symbol removals in the area.

Zhejiang province, one of China's wealthiest and a center of Christianity in the country, has released draft rules requiring crosses for Catholic and Protestant churches to be attached to the front of the building, rather than on the roof, state media have reported.

Ten Arab countries said on Thursday they would coordinate to counter artifact smuggling and preserve the region's heritage sites, as jihadists in Syria advanced to the gates of ancient Palmyra.

Representatives of the countries concluded a two-day meeting in Cairo with a condemnation of the Islamic State group's destruction of historic sites in Iraq.