In the pope's homeland, there's a woman who believes in angels and calls them aliens. Another who proudly identifies as a witch.

And a spiritual guru so turned off by the Vatican's opulence that he left the church to help others connect spiritually outside organized religion.

Jon Fosse, a master of spare Nordic writing in a sprawling body of work ranging from plays to novels and children's books, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works that "give voice to the unsayable."

Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel literature committee, said Fosse's work is rooted "in the language and nature of his Norwegian background."

Israel is a nation perennially swept up in religious fervor and conflict. And yet, strikingly, a large portion of its population is secular, and even its insular ultra-Orthodox community loses a steady stream of members who tire of its strict religious rules.

The country is home to about 7 million Jews, almost half of the global Jewish population. But Jewish identity is a complex blend of religious and ethnonational identity; most Israeli Jews are not diligent observers of Judaism.

The 28th edition of the European Film Festival in Lebanon has closed at Galaxy Grand Cinemas with the short film competition award ceremony, followed by the Avant-premiere of Lebanese feature film “Riverbed”.

Ambassador of the European Union to Lebanon, Sandra De Waele, awarded the Best Short Film Prize equally to three short films selected by an international jury, in the presence of Ambassador of Poland, Przemysław Niesiołowski, Director of Goethe- Institut Libanon, Anne Eberhard, and Cinema project manager at Institut français du Liban, Leïlah Gruas-Girling:

Lebanon's LGBTQ community has been reeling from months of snowballing hostility, as activists in one of the Middle East's more liberal countries worry about deteriorating personal and political freedoms.

Rights advocates and LGBTQ community members told AFP they have been harassed and even received death threats in recent months as controversy has raged over everything from rainbow imagery to family values and the "Barbie" movie.

Pope Francis said the Catholic Church was in need of repair to make it a place of welcome for "everyone, everyone, everyone," as he opened a big meeting on the future of the faith that has sparked hope among progressives and alarm among conservatives.

Francis presided over a solemn Mass in St. Peter's Square to formally open the meeting. But he warned both camps in the church's culture wars to put their "human strategies, political calculations or ideological battles" aside and let the Holy Spirit guide debate.

In the ancient city of Jericho in the occupied West Bank, a prehistoric site has raised Palestinian hopes of a tourism boom after UNESCO declared it a World Heritage site.

Just a few dozen visitors braved the midday sun to stroll around Tell al-Sultan, where archaeologists have unearthed evidence of community life dating back about 10,000 years.

A video that shows ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on the ground beside a procession of foreign Christian worshipers carrying a wooden cross in the holy city of Jerusalem has ignited intense outrage and a flurry of condemnation in the Holy Land.

The spitting incident, which the city's minority Christian community lamented as the latest in an alarming surge of religiously motivated attacks, drew rare outrage on Tuesday from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials.

In the quest to build better for the future, some are looking for answers in the long-ago past.

Ancient builders across the world created structures that are still standing today, thousands of years later — from Roman engineers who poured thick concrete sea barriers, to Maya masons who crafted plaster sculptures to their gods, to Chinese builders who raised walls against invaders.

Planted in a field, Vincent van Gogh painted furiously, bending the thick oils, riotous yellows and sumptuous blues to his will. The resulting masterpiece, "Wheatfield with Crows," bursts off the canvas like technicolor champagne. Art historians believe the Dutch master painted it on July 8, 1890.

As far as they can tell, Van Gogh then churned out another stunning work the very next day, July 9, of more wheat fields under thunderous clouds. In the painting's vibrant greens, the mind's eye can imagine the artist working frantically amid the sashaying stalks.