NEWS LITE : TALK ABOUT YOUR PARTY ANIMALS.

The pope gave his blessing, well-wishers gave livestock, and dancers in animal skins entertained the 6,000 guests.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, 72, wed his former secretary, 31-year-old Grace Marufu, in a gala public conclusion to their secret decade-long romance.

Saturday's ceremony was conducted at the mission in Kutama, Zimbabwe, where Jesuits educated the young Mugabe, once a strict Marxist and Zimbabwe's only leader since independence from Britain in 1980. He returned to the Catholic faith when his first wife died of a kidney ailment in 1991 after 33 years of marriage.

Church choirs accompanied by tribal drums sang spirituals in the local Shona language. Pope John Paul II sent a message blessing the couple's ``happy occasion'' and wishing them ``an abundance of divine grace and joy.''

The couple's 7-year-old daughter, Bona, offered her parents their rings from a velvet cushion. The normally austere president sported white and red orchids on the lapel of his dark suit.

Among the wedding gifts were chickens, turkeys and cattle.

Carter skipping Democrats' show

Don't bother looking for Jimmy Carter in the crowd at the Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago. Even though he is his party's only living ex-president, Carter will be hanging with fellow Georgian Ted Turner, and Turner's wife, Jane Fonda, at the couple's Montana ranch, Newsweek reports. Carter made the scene for the past three conventions. Friends say he took Ted and Jane up on their vacation invitation this year because by midsummer he still hadn't heard one word from convention organizers about the role envisioned for him in Chicago. ``If Clinton had called, I'm sure he would have been delighted to go,'' a friend of the former president told Newsweek. Alas, the invitation came too late.

Model says work, worry over actor shrank her

Yes, Elizabeth Hurley has lost too many pounds from her already svelte frame. No, she hasn't developed an eating disorder.

The partner of ``Four Weddings and a Funeral'' star Hugh Grant said she has just been working too hard.

``The busier I am, the less I think about food. Also, I often don't have time to sit down and eat,'' the Estee Lauder model and actress said in Monday's issue of Britain's Zest magazine.

Hurley, 30, said she loses her appetite when she feels nervous or under stress. She said she is 22 pounds lighter than once usual, and most of the weight was shed two years ago as she prepared to shoot a film. The rest came off ``inadvertently'' after Grant was caught with a prostitute in Los Angeles.

``I have been pretty thin at times, but I have never had an eating disorder,'' she said.

Hurley told US magazine recently that it still hurts to think about scandal last summer when Grant was caught with a Los Angeles hooker. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to probation.

Editor reveres chance to blow his own horn

Milton Esterow, the editor and publisher of ARTnews, has received an award not usually given to journalists: a shofar, or ram's horn, which is sounded in synagogues as part of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services.

The award was presented earlier this month by the Committee for Jewish Claims on Austria, which honored Esterow for publishing a series of articles demonstrating the failure of the Austrian government to return to their owners thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

Through the magazine's efforts, more than 1,000 pieces of art were found hidden in a monastery in Mauerbach. They will be auctioned by Christie's in Vienna on Oct. 29 and 30, with proceeds going to the Federation of Austrian Jewish Communities.

``We revealed the existence of the art in 1984 when I went there for a week and then assigned a contributing editor to do an investigation,'' Esterow said.

``Every year since then, we have had correspondents reporting that attempts to return the artworks were dragging on unnecessarily. In July of 1995 the Austrian government unanimously passed a law transferring ownership of the art to the Jewish community of Vienna.

``I have gotten my fair number of awards in my career, which spans nearly 50 years, but this has to be at the top of the list.''

Now Esterow says he intends to learn to blow his shofar.

``My son-in-law, Larry Rothstein, used to blow the shofar at a temple in Canoga Park, Calif., and he will train me - with the goal being to blow it on Yom Kippur,'' he said.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1) Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and Grace Ma rufu, his former secretary, marry in a gala affair attended by 6,000.

(2-3) 4-month-old British shorthair owned by Terry Bartlow of Simi Valley plays with her first-place card after winning in her category at the Friskies/CFA Colores Cat Club Show in Pasadena over the weekend. The two-day show drew more than 450 pedigreed cats from around the nation.

Judge Barbara Sumner holds up a shorthair breed.

Associated Press

(4) HURLEY