Gran, MarinoJanelidze, ZurabRodelo, Diana2018-12-072018-12-0720121532-0073http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/12058A regular category is said to be normal when it is pointed and every regular epimorphism in it is a normal epimorphism. Any abelian category is normal, and in a normal category one can define short exact sequences in a similar way as in an abelian category. Then, the corresponding 3 x 3 lemma is equivalent to the so-called subtractivity, which in universal algebra is also known as congruence 0-permutability. In the context of non-pointed regular categories, short exact sequences can be replaced with "exact forks" and then, the corresponding 3 x 3 lemma is equivalent, in the universal algebraic terminology, to congruence 3-permutability; equivalently, regular categories satisfying such 3 x 3 lemma are precisely the Goursat categories. We show how these two seemingly independent results can be unified in the context of star-regular categories recently introduced in a joint work of A. Ursini and the first two authors.eng3X3 LemmaCategoriesjournal article10.4310/HHA.2012.v14.n2.a1