The Vatican announced on Tuesday (May 15) it had settled a lawsuit against Italian clothing group Benetton for using an image of Pope Benedict XVI in one of its advertisement campaigns. The ad featured Pope Benedict XVI kissing Egyptian cleric Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed El-Tayeb.
A group of Baptist churches in Missouri has pulled out of a softball league because one of the teams hired a gay pastor. “”We call ourselves a Christian softball league,” the Rev. Ben Kingston said. “And if we call ourselves that, we want to be that.”
Franciscan University, an outpost of Catholic traditionalism in Ohio, is dropping its insurance plan for students rather than comply with the proposed Obama mandate to include birth control coverage.
Africa-Americans remain the religious group that's most opposed to gay marriage, but more than half (54%) have a favorable impression of President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage.
The feds say Hertz officials at SEATAC were totally within the law when they asked Somali Muslim employees to clock out for their daily prayers.
Episcopalians will debate whether to (officially) open Communion to non-baptized Christians at their General Convention this summer; the baptized-only rule has been on the books for years, but is often overlooked by local pastors.
WaPo looks at the biblical origins of today's most popular boys and girls names.
A popular and telegenic Catholic priest is stepping aside after he fathered a child; he's a member of the Legionaries of Christ whose founder, Marcial Maciel, kinda did the same thing.
Maurice Sendak, the author of the wildly popular “Where the Wild Things Are” children's book, was shaped by his family's Jewish history.
A Hasidic rabbi in Southern California who's in a long-shot bid for the Senate is raising eyebrows for saying he speaks for “white Christian America” and that “everything we need to know about Islam we learned on 9/11.”
The Vatican and Benetton have, um, kissed and made up over an ad that featured B16 kissing an Egyptian imam.
The NYT visits the Filipino orphanage founded by Tim Tebow's father, and finds that “most Filipinos, obsessed with basketball rather than football, have not heard of Tim Tebow, or of his father’s foundation.”
The Archdiocese of Washington has slapped Georgetown University on the wrist for inviting HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to give a commencement address this week.
Has Broadway found religion? Maybe. And were the Desperate Housewives of Wisteria Lane a sort of Christian allegory? Perhaps.
A rapper in Iran has a bullseye on his back for a song that pleaded with a Shiite saint to save the country from its current regime.
And ignore all that chatter about people in Washington being unable to get things done — we're in Washington, and we'll deliver the daily RNS Religion Roundup to your inbox every day for free, and it won't add a dime to your or Washington's debt ceiling.
— Kevin Eckstrom
