1.   In March, six Roman Catholic nuns were released by rebels in Sierra Leone after being kept hostage for nearly two months.

2.   The Nobel Prize-winning nun was released from a hospital on Thursday after a month of treatment following a near-fatal heart attack and pneumonia.

3.   The nuns were released last Saturday in Goma in neighboring Congo, but the Rwandan government insisted on interviewing them about their ordeal before they returned to Spain.

4.   Two jailed Tibetan nuns have been released from prison before the end of their sentences, a Tibet monitoring group said on its website Sunday.

5.   The church repeated its appeal to the kidnappers to release the nuns, six of whom are Italian and one Brazilian.