The Pittsburgh Steelers and Antonio Brown have reached an agreement on a four-year, $68 million deal that makes him the highest-paid wide receiver in the NFL, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

Brown is now tied to the Steelers through the 2021 season. He tweeted after he signed his new deal, which is front-loaded; Brown stands to make less money in the fourth and final year of the extension. The breakdown: Brown will make $18.5 million in the first three years of the contract and $12.5 million in the fourth, sources told Schefter. The deal also includes a $19 million signing bonus.

Pope Francis has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of pedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church even to its worst offenders in ways that survivors of abuse and the pope's own advisers question.

One case has come back to haunt him: An Italian priest who received the pope's clemency was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for his sex crimes against children as young as 12. The Rev. Mauro Inzoli is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him, The Associated Press has learned.

The Inzoli case is one of several in which Francis overruled the advice of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced a sentence that called for the priest to be defrocked, two canon lawyers and a church official told AP. Instead, the priests were sentenced to penalties including a lifetime of penance and prayer and removal from public ministry.

In some cases, the priests or their high-ranking friends appealed to Francis for clemency by citing the pope's own words about mercy in their petitions, the church official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the proceedings are confidential.