News
COVID outbreak reported at Mormon missionary training center
By Associated Press — December 31, 2021
PROVO, Utah (AP) — All 588 missionaries at the Provo, Utah missionary training center were tested and a total of 91 tested positive.
2021 Photos of the Year
By Kit Doyle — December 31, 2021
(RNS) — This week’s selection looks back at the best photos of 2021.
‘A moral giant’: South Africans pay their respects to Tutu
By Andrew Meldrum — December 31, 2021
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The Anglican archbishop's plain pine casket is on view Friday in St. George's Anglican Cathedral in Cape Town.
Idaho sheriff, charged with felonies, must surrender guns
By Associated Press — December 31, 2021
BLACKFOOT, Idaho (AP) — An eastern Idaho sheriff accused of threatening a church youth group with a gun can stay on the job but must surrender his firearms.
Vivaldi opera gets premiere in Ferrara nearly 300 years late
By Nicole Winfield — December 31, 2021
ROME (AP) — The Catholic Church and the northern Italian city of Ferrara made their peace with Vivaldi nearly 300 years after the city’s archbishop canceled the staging of one of his operas.
Comments renew debate over adoption as abortion alternative
By David Crary and John Hanna — December 31, 2021
(AP) — Discussion of adoption as an alternative to abortion intensified when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over a law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks.
Former ACNA lay pastor charged with additional sexual assault felonies
By Kathryn Post — December 30, 2021
(RNS) — Mark Rivera was charged Wednesday with two felony counts of criminal sexual assault in the Kane County, Illinois, circuit court.
Stay of removal issued for three immigrants who resided in ‘sanctuary’
By Jack Jenkins — December 30, 2021
(RNS) — Two of the immigrants had already left sanctuary, but one has been living at a Unitarian church for nearly three years.
Observers, detractors and preachers of religion who died in 2021
By Adelle M. Banks — December 30, 2021
(RNS) — Prominent figures in the world of religion who died in 2021.
10 up-and-coming faith influencers we wrote about (or published) in 2021
By Paul O'Donnell — December 30, 2021
(RNS) — 2021’s rising stars in religion were those speaking as much to social concerns as spiritual ones.
African leaders hail Tutu, but many don’t follow his lead
By Farai Mutsaka — December 30, 2021
MUTARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Many leaders have remained silent about Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s support for issues they’re uncomfortable with.
Muslim woman sues Missouri gun shop over hijab removal rule
By Margaret Stafford — December 30, 2021
(AP) — A firearms store and gun range in suburban Kansas City refused to let a Muslim woman use the range unless she removed her hijab, a Muslim civil rights organization alleged in a federal lawsuit. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the law firm of Baldwin & Vernon in […]
Boat with 120 Rohingya refugees disembarks in Indonesia port
By Rahmat Mirza — December 30, 2021
LHOKSEUMAWE, Indonesia (AP) — A group of 120 Rohingya Muslims disembarked from a boat that had drifted for days off Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh and was towed by a navy ship into port, officials said Friday. The refugees’ wooden boat was reportedly leaking and had a damaged engine. Efforts to rescue its passengers, who […]
Hindu religious leader held for insulting Gandhi in India
By Ashok Sharma — December 30, 2021
NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian police on Thursday arrested a Hindu religious leader for allegedly making a derogatory speech against India’s independence leader.
Myanmar military reverts to strategy of massacres, burnings
By Rishabh R. Jain, David Rising, and Sam McNeil — December 30, 2021
BANGKOK (AP) — When the young farmhand returned to his village in Myanmar, he found the still smoldering corpses in a circle in a burned-out hut, some with their limbs tied. The Myanmar military had stormed Done Taw at 11 a.m. on Dec. 7, he told the AP, with about 50 soldiers hunting people on […]
