A much-loved pope will be declared a saint on Sunday but not everyone in the Catholic Church agrees.

John Paul II also alienated many left-wing Catholics and has been blamed for hushing up child sex crimes.

A Turkish university cancelled a panel on gay rights after it came under harsh criticism from Islamic extremists who branded the event as "immoral", a liberal daily reported Monday.

The Ilke news agency, which is close to Turkey's Islamist Hezbollah movement made up of ethnic Kurds, condemned the timing of the conference, which had been planned for last Thursday, because it coincided with a week of events dedicated to the birth of Prophet Mohammed, the newspaper Radikal reported.

Pope John Paul II is rightly credited with having helped bring down communism, of inspiring a new generation of Catholics with a globe-trotting papacy and of explaining church teaching on a range of hot-button issues as Christianity entered its third millennium.

But the sexual abuse scandal that festered under his watch remains a stain on his legacy.

In the portrait, the little boy's blue eyes twinkle as he looks straight ahead. His apple cheeks shine. There's a gap in his teeth, and his reddish-brown hair is just slightly tousled. He's an All-American boy.

He's Dick, of the illustrated "Dick and Jane" series that helped teach generations of American schoolchildren to read from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Alistair MacLeod, the award-winning Canadian author who was best known for his short story collections and novel "No Great Mischief," has died. He was 77.

MacLeod's former publisher, Doug Gibson, confirmed the death on Sunday. He said MacLeod had been in a Windsor, Ontario, hospital ever since suffering a stroke in January.

A Saudi woman defied the kingdom's ban on female driving, getting behind the wheel of her husband's car before police detained the couple and fined the man, a newspaper said Sunday.

The 23-year-old woman was caught driving on Thursday in the Qatif district in Eastern Province, the Saudi Gazette said, adding police forced the couple to sign a pledge not to repeat the offence.

Colombia will pay special tribute to its late native son, the Nobel-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with a solemn ceremony Tuesday.

The memorial, led by President Juan Manuel Santos, will be held in Bogota's Primada Cathedral, the country's culture ministry tweeted Saturday.

With a nighttime procession lit by the glimmer of devotional candles and the flash of smartphone cameras, a church in Turkish-held northern Cyprus hosted its first Easter mass in nearly 60 years. 

Hundreds of Greek Cypriots crossed the Green Line to attend the ceremony at Famagusta's church of St George Exorinos, in the part of the Mediterranean island occupied by Turkish forces since 1974.

The death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez has brought his classic "One Hundred Years of Solitude" to the top of best seller lists.

The novel known for its "magic realism" was No. 1 on Amazon.com on Friday, a day after Garcia Marquez died at age 87. The Nobel laureate's most famous book was No. 3 on BarnesandNoble.com. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide since coming out in the 1960s.

Trials, suffering, resurrection: the essence of Easter has a special ring to Greeks as the country hopes to pull through a painful six-year recession.

In churches around the country, religious symbolism takes on a very practical relevance for those still struggling from four years of austerity, ever since the country nearly went bankrupt in 2010.