News Briefs

Pope Benedict XVI will visit Lebanon on Sept. 14 to 16 to formally end the Synod for the Middle East that began in October 2010 and to deliver an apostolic exhortation based on the synod deliberations. • Jan Karski, the late Polish-American professor who tried to alert the world to the horrors of the Holocaust, will be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during an event this summer. • Caritas Internationalis is trying to find out more about the whereabouts of three staff members who were arrested on April 23 as Sudan security forces shut down the offices of the Caritas-affiliate Sudan Aid in southern Darfur. • More than 22,104 people from 101 dioceses, 75 percent of them adults, were baptized in China on Easter Sunday, • George Doty, a philanthropist noted for funding the repair of the dome of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, passed away in his home in Rye, N.Y., on April 24 at the age of 94. • On April 25 Catholic Democrats and Faithful America, two national groups, delivered a petition with 20,000 signatures to Bishop Robert J. McManus of Worcester in an unsuccessful effort to persuade him to reinstate Victoria Reggie Kennedy as the commencement speaker at Anna Maria College in Paxton, Mass.