yahoonews | VATICAN CITY – The Vatican has sanctioned a Belgian bishop who resigned last year after admitting he had sexually abused his nephew, saying he can no longer act as a priest in public and may risk further church sanctions. The Vatican on Tuesday clarified the punishment against the forme...

alternet.org | Pope Ratzinger made pilgrimage to Spain this weekend, and in addition to the flock of the devoted  who came to be blessed, he had some unexpected company on the way: hundreds and hundreds of gay couples kissing as he went by.

yahoonews | A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths. Forty-f...

eutimes | Israeli police say there is sufficient evidence to press charges against Rabbi Mordechai Elon in the allegations of sexual abuse leveled against him by former students. They said that the prominent religious Zionist rabbi should be tried for allegedly committing indecent acts by force aga...

tonka report | After centuries of being kept under lock and key, the Vatican has started opening its Secret Archives to outsiders in a bid to dispel the myths and mystique created by works of fiction such as Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. The archives, until now jealously guarded from prying eyes...

(CNN) -- Child witchcraft allegations are increasing in parts of Africa, as thousands of children have been attacked, beaten or killed, according to a new report. The accused children are mostly boys, ages 8 to 14 -- with orphans, street children, albinos, and disabled as the most at risk, said the...

MSN | VATICAN CITY — The Vatican doubled the statute of limitations for sex abuse claims to 20 years Thursday as part of revised rules on the handling of cases involving priests. Responding to the worldwide clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican issued a new set of rules aimed at cracking down on ...

(CNN) -- A federal judge in Boston, Massachusetts, has ruled that the federal ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, because it interferes with an individual state's right to define marriage. The ruling gives same-sex married couples in Massachusetts the same right to federal benefits that hetero...

redicecreations.com | The following is the 9ine Hopi Prophecies. Have the 7th one just been fulfilled, with the Oil spill in the Gulf? The 8th could refer to "counter cultural's" walking out on regular society and "civilization" and the 9th could be referring to Betelgeuse going supernova in 2012 (K...

yahoo | VATICAN CITY – The Vatican said Friday it was astonished and outraged that Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse had conducted raids that also targeted the graves of two archbishops. The Vatican summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See to convey its anger over the raids, wh...

ROME (AP) - Catholic Church officials said Friday the recent creation by researchers of the first synthetic cell can be a positive development if correctly used, but warned scientists that only God can create life. Vatican and Italian church officials were mostly cautious in their first reaction t...

Reuters) - The Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles ordained an openly lesbian bishop on Saturday, a move likely to stoke further tensions between liberals and conservatives in the deeply divided global Anglican Communion.   Mary Douglas Glasspool is now a suffragan, or assistant, bishop in a lib...

Rawstory | Given Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's general lack of a judicial record, conservative opponents of the Obama administration are having some difficulty finding an issue on which to criticize the former Harvard Law dean and current solicitor-general. Which is not to say they're not try...

timesonline | The Pope was named in a lawsuit in a new court action in America yesterday by a man who says that he was abused as a child by a Roman Catholic priest. The legal action, which will put even more pressure on the Catholic Church over its legacy of child abuse scandals around the world, c...

rawstory | For the last several months, Fox host Glenn Beck has been promoting what he calls "the Plan," described as a hundred-year scheme for the "Refounding" of America. But as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann pointed out on Tuesday, there is more -- or perhaps less -- to "the Plan" that meets the eye. ...

foxnews | VATICAN CITY -- In a yet another revelation in the clergy sex abuse scandal, a French Catholic news service has published a 2001 letter from a top Vatican official praising a French bishop who covered up for a priest he knew had molested numerous boys. In October 2000, Father René Biss...

hotair.com | Judge Crabb, an appointee of former President Jimmy Carter, wrote in her decision that ‘”some forms of ‘ceremonial deism,’ such as legislative prayer, do not violate the establishment clause.” But she said the National Day of Prayer goes too far. “It goes beyond mere acknowledgment of ...

rumormillnews.com | RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”. Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pop...

Rome, Italy, Mar 31, 2010 / 11:47 am (CNA).- Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was “prompted by the devil.” Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist note...

alternet | Wisconsin-based priest Father Lawrence Murphy, who abused some 200 deaf boys in the 1950s and ’60s. The National Catholic Reporter, perhaps the US's most influential Catholic publication, published a line-in-the-sand editorial saying the Pope must be ready to answer questions and cal...