Friday’s Religion News Roundup: Pope Benedict XVI alive; Harold Camping apologizes; Church bowling

The Vatican says the pope is still alive, Harold Camping says he's still wrong and a pastor in Ghana still can't figure out how to turn his staff into a snake.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

News flash: The pope is not, in fact, dead.

Someone using a fake Twitter account under the name of Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone tweeted that Pope Benedict XVI had died on Thursday; a Vatican spokesman immediately denied the tweet.

Meanwhile, in other non-fake news …


A pope who actually is dead, John Paul II, could be declared a saint soon after another miracle was attributed to his intercession, Italian media are reporting. No details on the who, what, when, where of the alleged miracle.

Harold Camping, who became a laughingstock after the world failed to end (as he predicted) on May 21 or even Oct. 21,  says he's done with predictions and that his erroneous doomsday forecast was “sinful and incorrect.”

Mormon officials have blocked whistle-blower Helen Radkey's access to baptism records after she disclosed that Anne Frank, Daniel Pearl and other Jews were baptized by proxy in Mormon temples.

USA Today stops in at St. Ann Catholic Church in Peoria, which houses a bowling alley in the church basement. My favorite part: the lanes were installed “in 1945 by parishioners who wanted someplace to drink beer before public sales began at noon on Sundays.”

Attorney General Eric Holder has concerns about the NYPD spying on Muslim communities beyond New York City. The NYPD, meanwhile, says it wasn't looking at religion, even though the AP reports they looked at Egyptian Muslims (but not Egyptian Christians) and Syrian Muslims (but not Syrian Jews).

Our own David Gibson looks at the internal pressures facing U.S. Catholic bishops as they hunker down for a high-stakes battle with the White House over birth control.

Reuters reports that some 270 churches fell victim to foreclosure since 2010.

Three members of the extended Schuller clan have been let go from the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral, including the husband of senior pastor Sheila Schuller.

A Vatican panel said bishops, not theologians, have the last word on Catholic theology.

A spat over Christian prayers at town meetings is raising larger questions about Britain's Christian identity, and even the queen has been roped into this fight.


Jews are the most migratory religious group in the world, according to a new study. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren says Israel is the only real safe haven for Christians in the Middle East.

A pastor in Ghana was “given a hot chase” after he failed to turn a stick into a snake, like Moses did in the Bible, and the disappointed locals ran him out of town.

And with that, we're making a hot chase for the weekend.

— Kevin Eckstrom

(image via Wikimedia Commons)

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