Religion

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has essentially nationalized all assets and property owned by Vatican departments and affiliated institutions, declaring them to be sovereign patrimony owned by the Holy See and not any individual or office.

An array of U.S. Jewish leaders are sounding alarms about what they see as a threat to Israel’s democracy posed by its new government, fearing it will erode the independence of its judiciary and legal protections for minority groups.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis canceled one audience and skipped speeches he was set to deliver Thursday because of a bad cold, the Vatican said.

Francis, 86, did meet with young Orthodox priests and monks and members of the Max Planck Society, the German research organization that is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Prosecutors charged a man Wednesday with killing a Catholic bishop in a crime that stunned Los Angeles religious and immigrant communities.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Alcohol sales will soon be allowed in a tiny Nevada town where religious roots led to a decades-long ban on buying beer, wine and liquor.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis ushered in the annual Christian Lenten period of sacrifice and reflection by encouraging people on Ash Wednesday to cast off what he called the “dictatorship” of heavy agendas and superficial needs.

ROME (AP) — An Italian journalist on Wednesday deflated an accusation in the Vatican’s sprawling financial trial, as he disputed prosecutors’ claims about the source of a document concerning the Vatican’s 350 million euro investment in a London property.

The Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday ousted its second-largest congregation — Saddleback Church, the renowned California megachurch founded by pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren — for having a woman pastor.

SEATTLE (AP) — The Seattle City Council on Tuesday added caste to the city’s anti-discrimination laws, becoming the first U.S.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its investment arm have been fined $5 million for using shell companies to obscure the size of the portfolio under church control, the U.S.

LONDON (AP) — A front-runner to become Scotland’s next leader fought to keep her campaign alive Tuesday amid a backlash over her opposition to same-sex marriage.

Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, who belongs to the evangelical Free Church of Scotland, said Monday that her faith would have prevented her from voting in favor of allowing same-sex couples to wed.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has intervened for the third time to crack down on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, a sign of continued friction with Catholic traditionalists.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — On the shores of the Persian Gulf, a new complex houses a Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue and an Islamic mosque in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — For nearly two weeks, Mehmet Ismet has lived in the ruins of Antakya’s most beloved historic mosque, a landmark in a now-devastated city that was famed for thousands of years as a meeting place of civilizations and revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s city of Qom is one of the country’s most important centers for Shiite Muslim clerics, packed with religious schools and revered shrines. But even here, some are quietly calling for Iran’s ruling theocracy to change its ways after months of protests shaking the country.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man arrested Monday in the weekend killing of a Catholic bishop that shocked Los Angeles religious and immigrant communities is the husband of the victim's housekeeper and had done work at his home, authorities said.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis' Jesuit religious order has decided to prohibit a prominent Jesuit artist whose mosaics decorate churches around the globe from pursuing his artistic activity after 15 more people came forward with fresh accusations against him of spiritual, sexual and psychological abuse.

One of Kshama Sawant’s earliest memories of the caste system was hearing her grandfather — a man she “otherwise loved very much” — utter a slur to summon their lower-caste maid.

The Seattle City Council member, raised in an upper-caste Hindu Brahmin household in India, was 6 when she asked her grandfather why he used that derogatory word when he knew the girl’s name.

LONDON (AP) — Several Anglican bishops from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific said Monday that they no longer recognize Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby as their leader, deepening a rift within the global Anglican Communion over gay marriage.

Caste is an ancient system of social hierarchy based on one’s birth that is tied to concepts of purity and social status. Its history, evolution and current state are complicated.

A move to outlaw caste-based discrimination in Seattle has thrust this complex — and often misunderstood — system into the spotlight.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Gulf nation of Bahrain plans to put three religious reformers on trial Tuesday for allegedly questioning the foundations of Islam, a case that has divided the Shiite majority of the country ruled by a Sunni monarchy.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Catholic bishop in Southern California was shot and killed Saturday just blocks from a church, a slaying of a longtime priest hailed as a “peacemaker” that's stunned the Los Angeles religious community, authorities said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man who allegedly shot and wounded two Jewish men as they left synagogues in Los Angeles this week was charged Friday with federal hate crimes.

Jaime Tran, 28, allegedly carried out the attacks on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, U.S.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Abortion rights groups are challenging abortion bans in some states by arguing the bans — supported by certain religious principles — violate the religious rights of people with different beliefs.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — In the 1990s, Dallas Mavericks point guard Derek Harper famously shot down an offer to be traded to the Jazz, quipping to ESPN: “You go live in Utah.”

Two decades later, members of the Golden State Warriors squad mocked Salt Lake as a nightlife-free city that could “lull you to sleep.”

ELKO, Nev. (AP) — Police in rural northeast Nevada are looking for an arson suspect or suspects in connection with a break-in at a Mormon church in Elko where two fires were intentionally set over the weekend.

LOS ANGELES (RNS) — There’s nothing that Oscar Rodriguez Zapata enjoys more than going out for a drive to explore Los Angeles’ vast neighborhoods in search of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Three Iraqi troops were killed Thursday when a suspected Islamic State militant detonated an explosive vest, state media reported, as security forces remain on high alert for sectarian attacks.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has made clear in comments published Thursday by a Jesuit journal that he believes being pope is a lifetime position and that Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation was an exception.

CHICAGO (AP) — At age 103, Sister Jean awakes daily at 5 a.m. She sits up quickly to avoid going to sleep again — "I’ve got too much to do,” she says. After prayers for the day ahead, she reads the Gospel on her tablet.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) —

A Catholic high school in Philadelphia says students responsible for a racist video that showed teenage white girls in blackface are “no longer members of this school community."

NEW YORK (AP) — Among sermon writers, there is fascination – and unease – over the fast-expanding abilities of artificial-intelligence chatbots.

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — A state judge on Tuesday upheld a Maine law that eliminated the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, allowing survivors to pursue lawsuits for sex crimes that happened decades ago.

A civil rights advocate and former president of the North Carolina branch of the NAACP died by suicide in his Greensboro home last summer, according to an autopsy report released Tuesday.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — With the prospect of a sixth consecutive failed rainy season in the east and Horn of Africa, Kenya's president is hoping the heavens will finally open with the help of a national day of mass prayer on Tuesday.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The birth of Stanley Francis Rother was by all accounts ordinary, aside from the weather. The Catholic farm boy came into the world during an Oklahoma dust storm.

MINOT, N.D. (AP) — The nephew of imprisoned Utah polygamous leader Warren Jeffs will be returned to Utah to face charges that he kidnapped his niece, as he waived extradition at a court hearing Monday following his arrest in North Dakota.

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — More than 4,800 individuals may have been victims of child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church and 512 alleged victims have already come forward with their stories, an expert panel looking into historic abuse in the church said Monday.

CAIRO (AP) — She remembers it all: How female relatives held her down when she was 11, legs spread and genitals exposed. The fear that stiffened her body. The stranger in black holding the scissors.

More than four in ten Jews in the United States feel their status in America is less secure than it was a year earlier, according to a new survey by the American Jewish Committee.

The survey, conducted in the fall of 2022, was released Monday by the AJC, a prominent Jewish advocacy organization.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday expressed sadness and worry at the news that Bishop Rolando Álvarez, an outspoken critic of the Nicaraguan government, had been sentenced to 26 years in prison.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A priest in western Mexico has been shot to death, the eighth killed under the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The church’s Catholic Multimedia Center identified the priest as Rev.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — A building believed to be the oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children in the U.S. was hoisted onto a flatbed truck and moved a half-mile Friday to Colonial Williamsburg, a Virginia museum that continues to expand its emphasis on African American history.

HAMPTON, Minn. (AP) — The Buddhist community anchored by an ornate temple complex here in the Minnesota farmland is trying a new way to ensure its faith and ancestral culture stay vibrant for future generations -- an open call for the sacred dance troupe.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said Friday it may declare bankruptcy in the coming months as it faces “staggering" legal costs in dealing with some 400 lawsuits alleging priests and others sexually abused children.

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s government on Friday withdrew its appeal to citizens to mark Valentine’s Day next week not as a celebration of romance but as “Cow Hug Day” to better promote Hindu values.

The appeal had attracted widespread criticism from political rivals and on social media.

LONDON (AP) — The Church of England’s national assembly on Thursday voted to let priests bless same-sex marriages and civil partnerships, while continuing to ban church weddings for the same couples.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The umbrella group of Catholic religious orders in France is demanding church authorities assume responsibility for horrific evidence of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse in L’Arche, once a preeminent lay community dedicated to people with developmental disabilities.

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s government-run animal welfare department has appealed to citizens to mark Valentine’s Day this year not as a celebration of romance but as "Cow Hug Day” to better promote Hindu values.

PHOENIX (AP) — When medical personnel rushed onto the field to save Damar Hamlin’s life after the Buffalo Bills’ defensive back collapsed during a game last month in Cincinnati, many people witnessing the horrifying scene did the only thing they could to help.