In general, Pope Francis gets high marks for his inter-religious outreach, which has been a core feature of his papacy from the beginning. Shortly after his election in March 2013, for instance, he went to a juvenile detention center in Rome and included two Muslims among the inmates whose feet he washed.
Since then, he’s traveled to Israel and impressed Jews with his commitment to the Jewish/Christian relationship, he’s become only the second pope to enter a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, and, while in the country, he also donned a saffron robe given to him by a Hindu holy man during an interfaith meeting. Continue reading
ROME-During the days following his historic resignation, many observers speculated that an alleged “gay lobby” within the Vatican had pressured Benedict XVI to step down. In a new interview-book, the emeritus pope admits to the existence of such a lobby, but says it had only “four or five members” and that he’d managed to dismantle it.
American futurist Michio Kaku is predicting the possibility of an “immortal world.”
YEREVAN—As a centerpiece of his Papal Visit to Armenia, Pope Francis held an Ecumenical service for peace in Yerevan’s Republic Square, during which he urged Armenia’s youth to be active peacemakers in a world “suffering from persecutions and conflict.”
We bet you’ve never seen a meeting of the minds quite like this one.
When it comes to confronting climate change, the world’s cities are proving that there’s strength in unity. The historic climate agreement reached in Paris in December, which was approved by nearly all of the world’s nations, was made possible in part by the progress that cities have made by working together.
Pretoria – Controversial “snake pastor” Penuel Mnguni is back in the public eye again, this time after images of him driving over his congregants were posted on social media.
“It started out with hints of official, United States governmental oppression of Christianity in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage decision, such as “discrimination” complaints against people who refuse to celebrate homosexual behavior. Bakers, photographers and marriage-venue owners were penalized, and government officials publicly vilified their Christian faith and ordered them, in some case, to be re-educated. Now two rulings have cemented the American court system’s determination that Christians must not be allowed to express their faith in public life. The U.S. Supreme Court left standing a lower court decision that Washington state pharmacists who are Christian must violate their faith in order to practice their profession. The second decision came from a federal judge in Mississippi with a reputation for ruling against Christians who said county clerks in the state must violate their faith to hold their office.” –