A Catholic bishop in Norway who resigned last year admitted that he had molested a child about 20 years ago, church officials said Wednesday. New Zealand’s Catholic Church said it’s investigating five new claims from decades ago. A leading African archbishop said clergy sex abuse is a problem on his continent as well. Abuse survivors’ groups are proliferating throughout Europe, CNN says.

All the revelations are resurrecting painful members for abuse survivors here, says the AP. The Vatican’s former secretary of state has taken a lead role in defending Pope Benedict XVI from “unjust attacks” in the media. The current No. 2 says “basta, basta” (enough!) on the subject of sex abuse. The crisis engulfing the church probably means more rigorous background checks before picking another pope or cardinals. Costa Rica’s president, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, says the church should stop demanding that its priests be celibate.

President Obama has shifted the focus of America’s relationship with Muslims from fighting “Islamic radicalism” to forging common ground on issues like health care, science, and education, the AP reports. The decision to issue a visa to Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, who will be in the U.S. this week after being barred since 2004 by the Bush administration, may be part of that effort.

Obama named 10 members of a Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, including a Franciscan friar from the University of Chicago.

The appointment of a Mexican-born archbishop in Los Angeles shows the direction Benedict wants American Catholicism to take, says Rocco Palma in a LA Times editorial. ELCA Presiding Bishop Hanson hopes to have a candid conversation with the Presiding Bishop of Tanzania, who on Easter criticized the ELCA’s decision to allow noncelibate gay and lesbian pastors.

A federal judge has dismissed part of a labor lawsuit brought by a former Scientologist who says she worked 100-hour weeks for almost no pay. A Baylor study sees links between religion and racism. A Jewish group unleashed a “Twitterstorm” on Glen Beck. A theologian says his belief in evolution got him booted from the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Fla. A controversial Pentecostal preacher (pic at top left) who makes his followers panhandle in the name of abused children is trying to build a school for troubled teens.