Kevin Eckstrom reports in Wednesday’s RNS transmission on online games that feature crucifixions and how they are offending some Christians: For nearly 2,000 years, Christians have marked the days leading up to Easter with dramatic re-enactments of Jesus’ suffering, culminating with his crucifixion on Good Friday. This year, in a 21st century twist, online gamers suffer “virtual” crucifixions as a punishment for breaking the rules of a contest that allows competitors to taunt and jeer those left hanging on the cross. A 27-year-old electrical engineer from Burton, Mich.-whose online persona is a hot-tempered Barbarian named Cynewulf-was the first player to be crucified in the online game Roma Victor. His crime? Preying on unsuspecting Romans and violating the spirit of the game, which is set in Roman-occupied Britain, circa A.D. 180. The British company that developed the game said it never intended to offend Christians or mock Jesus’ crucifixion. But at least one Christian group says the game exploits what is sacred.

On the Gulf Coast hurricane-ravaged Jews are preparing for Passover, writes Ansley Roan: As residents of the hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast prepare for Passover, which celebrates God bringing the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, it’s as if they have lived through an epic of biblical proportions. “You’re talking about Exodus, where you’re going from something terrible, being under the rule of Pharaoh, toward freedom,” says Lori Beth Susman, a board member of a conservative synagogue in Biloxi, Miss. “For many of us, the last seven months have been that kind of journey.” Congregations along the Gulf Coast find themselves at different places on that journey after August’s arrival of Hurricane Katrina, the costliest hurricane in American history. Their Passover plans reveal the many ways Katrina continues to affect their religious lives, from damaging their synagogues to still scattering members of once-close congregations.

Hispanics are illustrating their influence on the American religious scene with their Holy Week Way of the Cross processions, reports Marcia Z. Nelson: A Way of the Cross, or Via Crucis, procession is a Good Friday tradition in this town of 150,000 outside Chicago, where almost one-third of the population is Hispanic. Such dramatic and public religious rituals may be coming to the streets of more communities, as growth and greater dispersion spreads the U.S. Latino population into new areas of the country. As the Hispanic share of the U.S. population increases, so also do Latinos fuel the growth of Catholicism in the nation. Almost 40 percent of America’s 67 million Catholics are Hispanic, and in the past four decades Hispanics have accounted for 71 percent of the increase in the number of Catholics. “In the Latino Catholic culture, what you find is a sacramental life,” says Ronaldo Cruz, executive director of the Secretariat for Hispanic Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The re-enactment of the suffering and death of Jesus in the Way of the Cross has cultural and spiritual meaning.

We also update Stacy Meichtry and Kristine M. Crane’s March 29 story called John Paul II: The Making of an Internet Saint, and add a sidebar with examples of online campaigns for sainthood: The messages arriving in Monsignor Slawomir Oder’s inbox are multiplying. A mother writes from Bloomington, Ill., appealing to Pope John Paul II from beyond the grave to heal her daughter from a sudden brain injury. Another click away, a child has been conceived in Mexico thanks to the late pope’s alleged intercession. Gone are the days when the centuries-old practice of saint making took place behind closed doors, and beyond public scrutiny. Oder, the leading advocate for John Paul’s sainthood, must hustle to meet the demands of the Internet, where potential miracles are being reported in real time and campaigns for and against John Paul’s sainthood are already in full swing. Just as John Paul brought the papacy onto the world stage through his media savvy, the campaign for his sainthood is updating the way faithful push for canonization.