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VATICAN CITY – Dragged deeper than ever before into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that the church hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him deposed. In court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, Vatican lawyers map out a three-pronged strategy…

BERLIN – Two months after Germany’s Roman Catholic Church became embroiled in a sex abuse scandal, the flood of new cases, allegations and complaints has started to ebb, the church’s top investigator said Tuesday. Though the church has not tallied the number of cases that have surfaced since the end of January, “it looks like…

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to mark the start of Passover with a private Seder in the executive mansion. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama invited friends and White House aides to mark the Jewish holiday with a meal on Monday. The Obama aides started the tradition during 2008 primary campaign; Obama made a…

(RNS) To many advocates of reform in the Catholic Church, the election of conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope in April 2005 was a blow to hopes the Vatican would change positions on gender, sexuality, divorce, and the church hierarchy. Yet the result encouraged three prominent reformers who were appointed to a U.S. bishops’ National…

(RNS) A South Carolina diocese has declared itself “sovereign” within the Episcopal Church, the latest salvo in a long-running skirmish between the conservative diocese and the denomination. The Diocese of South Carolina, which covers 47 parishes in the eastern and coastal parts of the state, voted on Friday (March 26) to assert the local authority…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Will Pope Benedict XVI resign? Less than two weeks ago, that question was just a publicity-grabbing ploy by an Irish online bookmaker. Now, following charges that he personally mishandled cases of pedophile priests in Munich and Milwaukee, the idea of Benedict stepping down is actually being taken seriously, at least in some…

(RNS) Easter usually comes twice to the Kringas household in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.: first with baskets of pastel eggs and a ham baked in the oven, then a week or more later with dark red eggs and lamb roasted on a spit. Maureen Kringas, who splits her time between her mother’s Catholic parish and her…

Mar. 24–Matzoh is back on display at the local supermarket, the sign of another high holiday on the Jewish calendar. Grocers know observant and even not-so-active Jews want kosher foods for the two Seder meals that highlight the eight days of Passover, which starts Monday night. They stock up on foods that comply with the…

(RNS) A former Dominican priest and outspoken critic of creationism has won this year’s Templeton Prize — an honor awarded to scholars who study how science and religion intersect. Francisco J. Ayala is a professor of both biology and philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, where he has been a leading critic of creationism…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) American victims of clerical sex abuse protested at the Vatican on Thursday (March 25), charging that Pope Benedict XVI had personally mishandled the case of a Wisconsin priest who molested up to 200 deaf boys more than 35 years ago. “What the pope will not admit is what he knew and the…
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