MUNICH – Pope Benedict XVI’s former diocese is facing new allegations of physical and sexual abuse on a daily basis, the head of its new sex-abuse task force said Friday. “It is like a tsunami,” Elke Huemmeler, who leads the diocese’s newly founded abuse prevention task force, told The Associated Press. Huemmeler estimates there are…

KATHMANDU, Nepal (RNS/ENI) Once the only Hindu kingdom in the world, Nepal was declared a secular state by its parliament in 2006 and the monarchy was abolished two years later. Now, with a new constitution due in May, Hindu groups are pressuring the government to reinstate Hinduism as the state religion. Kalidas Dahal, a Hindu…

CAIRO – Egypt’s state news agency says a moderate, Western-educated Islamic scholar has been named the country’s new top cleric. The Middle East News Agency said Friday that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appointed Ahmed el-Tayeb the new grand sheik of Cairo’s Al-Azhar, the pre-eminent theological institute of Sunni Islam, the faith’s majority sect. He takes…

(RNS) A lesbian priest has been confirmed as an assistant bishop in Los Angeles, making her the Episcopal Church’s second openly gay bishop and potentially widening its breach with Anglicans overseas. A majority of the more than 100 bishops and dioceses in the Episcopal Church ratified the December election of Bishop-elect Mary Douglas Glasspool, Presiding…

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