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WASHINGTON (RNS) The Obama administration’s embattled nominee for religious freedom ambassador is comparing herself to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as she tries for a second time to land the post. “They called Margaret Thatcher the ‘iron lady,”‘ the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook said Tuesday (April 5) in an address to a dinner of…

(RNS) A British theoretical astrophysicist who has achieved renown for his study of the cosmos and for sounding warnings about the future of humanity has won the $1.6 million 2011 Templeton Prize. Martin J. Rees of Cambridge University, a former president of Britain’s prestigious Royal Society, was announced the winner on Wednesday (April 6) by…

NEW YORK (RNS) The Cross at Ground Zero was one of thousands of I-beams used to construct the iron skeletons of the World Trade Center towers. This one fell from the fiery, apocalyptic heavens during the 9/11 terror attacks and stuck upright in the ground, in a field of similar but smaller crosses. The iconic…

CANTERBURY, England (RNS/ENInews) A self-effacing multimillionaire has become a local hero after buying a series of 17th-century religious paintings and then donating them back to the Church of England in a bid to help boost art tourism. Jonathan Ruffer, 59, paid 15 million pounds (about $21.3 million) for a series of paintings of the biblical…

LONDON (RNS) One of the prominent figures in the revived ancient priesthood of Druidism in Britain has been charged with defrauding the government of 40,000 pounds (about $25,000) in welfare payments over the past eight years. Druid Terry Dobney, the self-styled “Keeper of the Stones” at the nation’s ages-old monument at Stonehenge, is best known…

CLEVELAND (RNS) In days long gone, Roman Catholic priests regularly made deathbed house calls, even in the middle of the night with little notice, to pray over the dying and anoint them with holy oils. The candlelight ritual, popularly known as last rites, continues in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice houses and private homes. But it…

(RNS) Neither snow nor rain nor Saturday Sabbaths should keep a Missouri mailman from his appointed rounds, a federal appeals court has ruled. Seventh-day Adventist Hosea Harrell argued he was the victim of religious discrimination when the U.S. Postal Service refused to give him Saturdays off. Harrell took the days off anyway and was fired…

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Supreme Court on Monday (April 4) rejected a challenge to an Arizona school tuition credit program critics contend was principally benefiting religious institutions. The 5-4 decision, combined with a 2007 ruling rejecting a similar challenge to the Bush administration’s faith-based office, seems to solidify the court’s skepticism toward attempts to derail government…

NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) For 46 years, the chief assassin of slain civil rights icon Malcolm X has been hiding in plain sight in Newark, according to a major new biography of the African-American leader released Monday (April 4). Al-Mustafa Shabazz is a 72-year-old Muslim who is married to a community leader who owns a boxing…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the early resignation of an “emotionally drained” bishop in Australia whose diocese has been the focus of several prominent sex-abuse scandals. The Vatican announced on Monday (April 4) that Bishop Michael John Malone, 71, of Maitland-Newcastle has resigned under a provision that requires the resignation of a…
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