News Briefs

Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino of Caracas told Venezuelan television on Feb. 20 that the church is willing to help establish peace, but reminded the government of its duty to rein in armed groups that are violently disrupting peaceful demonstrations. • Noting the proposed death penalty for the 20-year-old alleged Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men urged in a statement on Feb. 19 that prosecutors consider restorative justice alternatives that do not “deepen the harm and wounds” of Tsarnaev’s alleged crimes. • The U.S. bishops’ conference urged the Obama administration on Feb. 12 to finally sign on to the 1997 U.N. convention intended to ban the use of land mines. • Megan Rice, 84, of Washington, a member of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, was sentenced on Feb. 18 to 35months in prison for breaking into a nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee and defacing its walls in July 2012. • In an unusual video message, recorded on an iPhone and released on YouTube, the pope says all Christians share blame for their divisions, speaks of his “longing” for their unity and insists that God will bring the miracle of Christian unity to completion.