The pope has returned to the Vatican. The AP story begins,

Pope John Paul II was released from the hospital and returned to his apartment overlooking St. Peter's Square on Sunday after reassuring the world's Roman Catholic faithful with his own raspy voice that he is on the mend.

Regarding that raspy voice, the AP tells us that we won't know until Monday whether "the tube in his throat was removed or replaced with a smaller version designed to help him speak."

The crowds appeared to be overjoyed to see the pontiff out of the hospital. "Long live the pope!" is what several observers reportedly chanted. Or as the titlemeisters at the New York Press would put it, Keep Pope Alive.

In our latest entry to the "Can Islam be a religion of peace?" file (previous entry here), we add the general buzz created last week when the Islamic Commission of Spain, the body representing the country's ever inflating number of Muslims, issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden, declaring his actions outside the bounds of Islam.

Unlike the famous fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the Spanish ruling didn't call for bin Laden to be hunted down like a dog, but, hey, it's a start.