Christians

Clergy sex abuse victims listed a "dirty dozen" potential papal candidates on Wednesday and urged the Roman Catholic Church to "get serious" about protecting children, helping victims and exposing corruption.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric, has resigned with immediate effect in the wake of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, he said in a statement on Monday.

Bangalore : A fast-track court in Bangalore has sentenced a church priest from Metagalli, Mysore to 7 years imprisonment for kidnapping and raping a 15-year old girl. The incident happened in 2009.

New York: A 20-year-old woman sued the Catholic diocese of Crookston this week, alleging that in 2004, when she was 15, her parish priest, Reverend Joseph Jeyapaul, sexually abused her in the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota.

Mangalore: Mangalore has been witnessing a lot of violence since the past one year and the most prominent among them was the attack on churches by Bajrang Dal activists who claimed that the attack was carried out to protest against conversions.

Nagpur (Maharashtra): In Savner taluka, a church engaged in conversion of Hindus, was attacked

London: More than 100,000 Britons have recently downloaded 'certificates of de-baptism' from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.

Panaji (Goa): It has been published on the website of ‘Union of Catholic Asian News’ that catholic missionaries have welcomed the ban imposed by the Congress Home Minister Shri. Ravi Naik on a staunch Hindu Organization Sree Rama Sena which had strongly opposed ‘pub’ culture.

USA: Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that it was very humiliating to one billion strong Hindus of the world when Pope Benedict referred their God as 'just any god'.

New York: About 12 per cent of Americans believe in some sort of a higher power but not the personal God who is at the core of monotheistic faiths. Since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents — 1.2 per cent — said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology and Wicca.

Kochi (Kerala): Sathyadeepam weekly, the official organ of the Syro-Malabar Church, has admitted that almost 20 percent of the nuns are feeling mentally insecure or unaccepted in convents.

Washington (USA): America has always been very religiously vibrant, said Pew political scientist John Green, but today there are more options, more "things you can move from and to."

UK: The Vatican has issued new rules making the route to sainthood more difficult.

Montclair (USA): A married pastor of an Orange County church accused of having sex with a minor from Montclair was hit with additional charges Friday after he again disobeyed a court order to stay away from the teen.

USA: There are many white christian denominations/sects in the USA, especially in the southern and some midwestern states, that will not allow the mixing of whites and blacks in their churches for ideological reasons.