Religion

USA Today reports: A surge in calls to a clergy abuse hotline in Pennsylvania is breathing new life into a vast investigation of “predator priests” and Roman Catholic Church leaders accused of protecting them. The hotline has drawn more than 300 calls since the release of a withering grand jury report last week claiming church leaders protected hundreds of accused …

NBC News reports: Pope Francis on Monday issued a letter to Catholics around the world condemning sexual abuse and cover-up, and demanding accountability in response to new revelations in the United States of decades of misconduct by the Catholic Church. Francis begged forgiveness for the pain suffered by victims and said lay Catholics must be involved in any effort to …

The Associated Press reports: A Pennsylvania bishop named in a grand jury report on rampant sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy said Friday he has “profound remorse” and offers his “heartfelt apology” to the victims. Speaking at a Mass of Forgiveness, Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer opened by reading the first paragraph of this week’s stunning report that said more than …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really, truly, absolutely wants to be known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not the LDS Church. Not the Mormon church. It made that clear Thursday — even though the last attempt to eradicate those nicknames for the Utah-based faith flopped. The new push …

CNN reports: The Vatican broke its silence on Thursday about a Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of sexual abuses by priests and cover-ups by bishops, calling the accusations “criminal and morally reprehensible.” “Regarding the report made public in Pennsylvania this week, there are two words that can express the feelings faced with these horrible crimes: shame and sorrow,” …

CNN reports: The Vatican has declined to respond to an explosive grand jury report detailing decades of sexual abuse and cover-ups by priests and bishops in Pennsylvania, refusing even to say whether church officials in Rome have read the damaging documents. “We have no comment at this time,” Paloma Ovejero, deputy director of the Vatican’s press office, said Wednesday. But …

The Allentown Morning Call reports: George said he never discussed the nude Polaroids, or the twisted, secret gift he and the other kids had been given decades ago by the men who preyed on them. These weren’t the kinds of things you could share without feeling humiliated, especially not if you grew up tough, like he did on the South …

The Allentown Morning Call reports: A scathing grand jury report released Tuesday reveals sexual abuse by hundreds of priests that went unchecked for decades in dioceses across Pennsylvania, including Allentown. Instead of reporting pedophiles, dioceses routinely shuffled them from parish to parish, enabling them to prey upon new victims, the document shows. The statewide grand jury spent two years on …

Irish Central reports: Irish leader Leo Varadkar will bring up same sex marriage to Pope Francis when he meets him in Ireland on August 25th saying that such marriages are the same as any conventional marriage and should be treated as such by the church. Varadkar is Ireland’s first gay leader. Questioned on what he would say to the Pope …

USA Today reports: Pope Francis has changed church teaching about the death penalty, saying in a new policy published Thursday that it is always “inadmissible” because it “attacks” the inherent dignity of all humans. The Vatican said Francis had approved a change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church – the compilation of official Catholic Church teaching. Previously, the catechism …

Via press release from the Satanic Temple: The Satanic Temple’s infamous Baphomet statue will make an appearance at the Arkansas state Capitol on August 16th from 1-3pm during “The Satanic Temple’s Rally for the First Amendment.” The rally is intended to bring together religious leaders of different faiths to discuss the importance of the First Amendment and its protection for …

The New York Times reports: The pope has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and a prominent diplomat who has been at the center of a mushrooming scandal after several men came forward with allegations of decades-old sexual abuse, the Vatican announced on Saturday. In a statement, the Vatican said: “Yesterday evening the …

“There are many countries in which religious freedom is not available. And we believe that by gathering citizens from around the world – we’ll have over 80 delegations from different countries, 40 plus of my counterparts at the foreign minister level will be in attendance, and religious leaders like yourself – all brought together to highlight the central nature of …

Agence France-Presse reports: A gay couple was publicly whipped in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province on Friday (July 13), despite an earlier pledge by officials to stop the punishment after it drew international criticism. The two men were flogged more than 80 times each for having gay sex, which is outlawed under local Islamic law, as a jeering crowd hurled abuse …

The South China Post reports: Philippine Catholic bishops on Monday called for fasting and prayers after President Rodrigo Duterte called God “stupid” and questioned God’s existence in profane remarks that set him on a collision course with Asia’s largest Catholic Church. Archbishop Romulo Valles and the association of bishops that he heads called for a day of prayers on July …

Reuters reports: A federal jury in Brooklyn, New York today convicted two men for their roles in an international scheme to make millions of dollars by illegally trading on corporate press releases that were stolen by computer hackers before they became public. Vitaly Korchevsky, a Pennsylvania pastor and former Morgan Stanley (MS.N) vice president, and co-defendant Vladislav Khalupsky were each …

The Hill reports: Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said on Sunday he believes “Jesus would approve of gay marriage.” “I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,” Carter, who describes himself as a born-again Christian, told HuffPost …

The Philippine Star reports: President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday vowed to immediately resign if Christians can prove that their God exists. “If there is anyone of you there, the noisy ones, who would say that you have been to heaven, talked to God, saw him personally, and that He exists, the God that is yours, and if He does is …

The Christian Post reports: Brad Waller, a married father and senior pastor of the Grace Church of the Islands, PCA, in Savannah, Georgia, has left his church and several others in his congregation in shock after confessing to abusing multiple men and boys under his spiritual care with sexual foot massages, which prompted his swift removal from ministry by the …

CNN reports: Embattled Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Scott Pruitt directly appealed to President Donald Trump this spring to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions and let him run the Department of Justice instead, according to three people familiar with the proposal. In an Oval Office conversation with Trump, Pruitt offered to temporarily replace Sessions for 210 days under the Vacancies Reform …