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WASHINGTON (RNS) In 2008, Safoorah Khan, a math teacher in Illinois, asked for 15 days of unpaid leave (19 days including weekends) to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, an obligation for all Muslims. The local school board refused, but the Justice Department stepped in last December and sued on behalf of Khan, saying she was…

WASHINGTON (RNS) A new multimillion-dollar, high-tech, interactive museum of the Bible was announced Thursday amid 130 artifacts of the Good Book at a private exhibition at the Vatican Embassy. The exhibit was a sample of Jewish, Roman Catholic and Protestant treasures from the future museum’s 10,000 manuscripts and texts, one of the world’s largest biblical…

OREGON CITY, Ore. (RNS) Two members of a controversial Oregon City church that rejects medical treatment were released from prison Wednesday (March 30) after serving time in the faith-healing death of their teenage son. Jeffrey and Marci Beagley were convicted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide last year and sentenced to 16 months in…

MOBILE, Alabama (RNS) The Archdiocese of Mobile has told staff and volunteers who work with children that electronic communication with minors must be limited to “providing information related to a ministry or event and not for socialization or other personal interaction.” The policy, implemented on Friday (April 1), applies to faculty and staff at Catholic…

WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned a book by Sister Elizabeth Johnson, a prominent feminist theologian, charging that her attempts to forge new understandings of God depart from traditional Catholic theology. The bishops’ Committee on Doctrine on Wednesday (March 30) said Johnson’s 2007 book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Modern popes have had their fans and detractors, but few would dispute their reputations for personal virtue. That’s partly why the five most recent pontiffs — including John Paul II, who will be beatified on May 1 — are under formal consideration for sainthood. But as the new television show The Borgias…

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, the Louisiana native and peace activist who was excommunicated three years ago for publicly supporting women’s ordination, now faces expulsion from his religious order and from the priesthood. Bourgeois and Mike Virgintino, a spokesman for the Maryknolls, a missionary order of priests, confirmed that “with much sadness” the…

A 2008 campaign manager for presidential hopeful Mitt Romney tells the National Journal that the former Massachusetts governor’s religious roots are a stumbling block towards his race to the White House. Carl Forti, Romney’s deputy campaign manager and political director in 2008, told the National Journal Insiders Conference that the yet-undeclared candidate in 2012 will…

(RNS) Almost all U.S. churches witnessed a change in the financial giving they received in 2010 compared to 2009, with smaller churches feeling the squeeze but larger churches faring relatively better, according to a new report. Only 12 percent of churches reported unchanged giving from 2009, according to the State of the Plate survey released…

LONDON (RNS/ENInews) William Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre will mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible with a cover-to-cover reading between Palm Sunday and Easter Monday. Twenty actors will take part in the reading, which is scheduled to take 69 hours over eight days. They will recite all 1,189 chapters of the historic Bible in…
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