On this feast of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, Fr. Ignatius exhorts us to share in Jesus' sorrows by carefully paying attention to the sorrows of Our Lady and offering ours with Hers.

The new pontiff made his appeal in an address to diplomats accredited to the Vatican, sending a message through them to the leaders of the more than 170 countries with which the Vatican has diplomatic relations. Speaking in Italian, he also made another impassioned appeal for the defense of the poor and of the environment, saying richer countries should fight what he called "the spiritual poverty of our times" by re-forging links with God.

He urged them to help keep religion central in public life and promote inter-religious dialogue as a catalyst for efforts to build peace.

Under last month's White House executive order on cybersecurity, the scans will be driven by classified information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies - including data from the National Security Agency (NSA) - on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts.

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit attended the mass in which Pope Francis, the new pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, was installed on 19 March at the Vatican in Rome. Tveit joined prominent religious and political leaders from around the world at the mass in St Peter's Square, marking the official start of Francis's papacy.

Ecumenical leaders present at the installation included Bartholomew I, the first Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to attend a papal installation since the schism of 1054.

Inside a warren of rooms buried in the basement of Gregorio Marañón hospital here, Dr. Aviles and his team are at the sharpest edge of the bioengineering revolution that has turned the science-fiction dream of building replacement parts for the human body into a reality.

Could a new payment method that uses biometrics technology, or more specifically fingerprint scanning, replace our need to carry around a wallet full of credit cards? The team behind PayTango certainly hope so, although its technology is still in the testing mode.

The YC Combinator-backed startup, founded by four Carnegie Mellon University students who graduate later this year, has piloted the readers in three locations on campus.

To use the technology for the first time, the consumer touches the finger pad with their index and middle fingers and then swipes a credit card they want associated with their prints. It also asks for their mobile phone number. The reader plugs right into a merchant's existing point-of-sale terminal and software.

Control - this is what fuels many Congressmen and women. Recently, two U.S. senators met with President Obama, vouching for a biometric national ID card that would force workers to submit to a fingerprint, hand, or iris scan. Any worker failing to comply with this biometric tracking mandate, would be terminated from their job.

The program would be titled the "Believe System," an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.

The ID card would contain a digital encryption key that would be required to match work authorization databases. The micro-processing chip on the card would store the biometric identifier. The worker would be required to carry this card and the employer would be forced to scan it. The two sponsors of the legislation, Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) say the new identification cards will "ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs, dramatically decreasing illegal immigration."