OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors and other mourners commemorated the 78th anniversary Friday of the Nazi German death camp's liberation, some expressing horror that war has again shattered peace in Europe and the lesson of Never Again is being forgotten.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Representatives of several student groups at a Minnesota college that dismissed an adjunct art instructor for showing an image of the Prophet Muhammad to her class say they do not want the school's embattled president to resign.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Turkey summoned the Danish ambassador and accused Denmark of endorsing a “hate crime” after an anti-Islam activist on Friday burned two copies of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, in a solitary protest in Copenhagen.
MOSCOW (AP) — A former Russian Orthodox monk, who denied that the coronavirus existed and defied the Kremlin, was handed a seven-year prison sentence Friday.
Nikolai Romanov, 67, who was known as Father Sergiy until his excommunication by the Russian Orthodox Church, urged his followers to disobey the Russian government's lockdown measures and spread conspiracy theories about a global plot to control the masses.
ALGECIRAS, Spain (AP) — Spanish police on Thursday raided the home of a young Moroccan man held over the machete attacks at two Catholic churches the previous night that left a church officer dead and a priest injured in the southern city of Algeciras.
DENVER (AP) — The Colorado baker who won a partial U.S. Supreme Court victory after refusing to make a gay couple’s wedding cake because of his Christian faith lost an appeal Thursday in his latest legal fight, involving his rejection of a request for a birthday cake celebrating a gender transition.
(RNS) — When actor Daniel Franzese visited Jerusalem in November, he looked for God in all the usual places.
But it wasn’t at the Western Wall or Mount of Olives where he encountered the divine, but in a hole-in-the-wall ’80s-style gay bar that was hosting a “David and Jonathan” theme night for religious queer people.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A machete-wielding man killed a sexton and injured a priest at two Catholic churches in the city of Algeciras on Wednesday before being arrested, Spain’s interior ministry said.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis lamented that the use of guns by civilians to defend themselves is becoming a “habit.”
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ people into the church.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Faculty leaders at a Minnesota college that dismissed an art history instructor who showed depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a course have overwhelmingly called for the university president to resign.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis says he hasn’t considered issuing norms to regulate future papal resignations and plans to continue for as long as he can as bishop of Rome, despite a wave of criticism from some top-ranking conservative cardinals and bishops about his papal priorities.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has warned there’s a risk that a reform process in the German Catholic Church over calls for married priests and other possible liberalizing reforms might become harmfully “ideological.”
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has shed light on the Catholic Church’s handling of sex abuse allegations against East Timor’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning independence hero, suggesting that he indeed was allowed to retire early rather than face prosecution or punishment.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Jewish group that commissioned a survey on Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands said Wednesday that the results showed “a disturbing lack of awareness of key historical facts about the Holocaust,” prompting calls for better education in the nation that was home to diarist Anne Frank and her family.
BERLIN (AP) — Lore Mayerfeld was 4 years old when she escaped from the Nazis in 1941. Together with her mother, the little Jewish girl ran away from her German hometown of Kassel with nothing but the clothes she wore and her beloved doll, Inge.
ISTANBUL (AP) — Outrage over a Quran-burning protest in Sweden produced a second day of protests in Turkey, reflecting tensions between the two countries.
JERUSALEM (AP) — A Lutheran church ceremony in Jerusalem on Sunday ordained the first Palestinian female pastor in the Holy Land.
Sally Azar will head the English-speaking congregation at the Church of the Redeemer, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land said.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday made an impassioned plea, delivered partly in Spanish, for an end to widening violence in Peru over demands for the resignation of the country's president.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A group of religious leaders who support abortion rights filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging Missouri's abortion ban, saying lawmakers openly invoked their religious beliefs while drafting the measure and thereby imposed those beliefs on others who don't share them.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Dora Jean Edwards, the mother of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, has died, the governor announced in a Friday morning statement.
NEW YORK (AP) — Administrators of a trust fund established to preserve historic Black churches in the United States on Friday revealed a list of houses of worship receiving $4 million in financial grants.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Flyers coach John Tortorella defended Russian defenseman Ivan Provorov’s decision to cite religious beliefs as his reason to boycott the team's pregame Pride celebration.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A federal court jury convicted a Kansas man who insisted that a death threat he made against U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner was a message from God, amid what authorities have said is a sharp rise in threats against members of Congress and their families.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra visited Minnesota on Thursday on a Midwest trip to affirm the Biden administration's commitment to abortion rights despite the U.S.
DENVER (AP) — A man who says he was repeatedly sexually abused as a teen by his Catholic priest more than two decades ago filed a lawsuit against the now-defrocked priest and the Archdiocese of Denver on Thursday, taking advantage of a recently passed law that allows victims to sue even if the statute of limitations has expired.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rio de Janeiro on Thursday opened the doors to a Holocaust Memorial that honors not only Jewish victims, but also lesser-known groups likewise persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Curators hope that the memorial, perched atop one of Rio’s shapely hills with a view of Sugarloaf Mountain and the Guanabara Bay, becomes a pilgrimage site for a diverse audience.
ROME (AP) — The archbishop of Vienna, a longtime friend and former student of Pope Benedict XVI, has confirmed that it was he who wrote a letter to his former teacher urging him to accept election as pontiff in 2005 if the votes went his way.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov cited his Russian Orthodox religion as the reason he did not participate in pregame warmups when the team wore Pride-themed jerseys and used sticks wrapped in rainbow Pride tape.
Anti-abortion activists will have multiple reasons to celebrate — and some reasons for unease — when they gather Friday in Washington for the annual March for Life.
The march, which includes a rally drawing abortion opponents from across the nation, has been held annually since January 1974 — a year after the U.S.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — A Muslim religious leader’s instruction to women to dutifully accept a husband's “invitation to bed” to procreate has sparked outrage among many Turkish Cypriots, who saw the remarks as an imported encroachment of fundamentalist Islam on their secular community.
LONDON (AP) — The Church of England said Wednesday it will allow blessings for same-sex, civil marriages for the first time but same-sex couples still will not be allowed to marry in its churches.
The decision followed five years of debate and consultation on the church's position on sexuality.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Attorneys for an adjunct art professor said Tuesday she is suing the Minnesota university that dismissed her after a Muslim student objected to depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a global art course, while the university admitted to a “misstep” and plans to hold public conversations about academic freedom.
YOAKUM, Texas (AP) — A small plane crashed Tuesday while approaching a Texas airport, killing four members of a Tennessee church and leaving the lead pastor injured, authorities and the church said.
SYDNEY (AP) — A once high-ranking Australian cardinal who spent more than a year in prison before his child abuse convictions were quashed on appeal will be interred Feb. 2 after a requiem Mass at Sydney’s St.
ATLANTA (AP) — America has honored Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday for nearly four decades yet still hasn’t fully embraced and acted on the lessons from the slain civil rights leader, his youngest daughter said Monday.
CHENNAI, India (AP) — The former computer professional — now a very specialized type of artist — locked his gaze on the deity before him.
On a recent afternoon, 33-year-old S. Goutham was perched on a ladder at the altar of the goddess Durga at the Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Chennai, India.