Yahoo! News: Religion News

---

• Migrants, church may end Malaysia government's Borneo vote bank
• France boosts security at religious sites
• Pope opens bishop synod, names 2 church doctors
• Suspicions, doubts linger after pope's butler verdict
• Pope launches drive to reclaim lapsed Western Catholics
• Pope names 2 church doctors: preacher St. John of Avila and mystic St. Hildegard of Bingen
• Pope names 2 doctors of church, a top church honor
• Can a dying language revive Lebanon's Christian population?
• Pope names 2 doctors of church, church's top honor
• Mormon church lowers age requirements for missionaries

Migrants, church may end Malaysia government's Borneo vote bank Posted: 07 Oct 2012 02:14 PM PDT KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia (Reuters) - Housewife Fawziah Abdul wants to thank former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad for making her a citizen 10 years after she illegally slipped into Borneo from the southern Philippines in search of a better life. The 50-year-old lives on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Malaysia's Sabah state, where her tin-roofed shack jostles for space with more than 1,000 others in a slum where children play beside heaps of rubbish. She is hopeful that her three children will get a new home and identity cards if she votes for the government again. ...

France boosts security at religious sites Posted: 07 Oct 2012 11:51 AM PDT France is boosting security at Jewish and other religious sites after blanks were fired at a synagogue and police accused a suspected cell of radical Islamists of ties to a grenade attack on a kosher grocery.

Pope opens bishop synod, names 2 church doctors Posted: 07 Oct 2012 09:20 AM PDT Pope Benedict XVI urged the world's bishops on Sunday to try to bring back Catholics who have left the church as he opened a three-week meeting to reinvigorate the church's evangelization mission.

Suspicions, doubts linger after pope's butler verdict Posted: 07 Oct 2012 06:47 AM PDT VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The swift conviction of Pope Benedict's former butler leaves lingering suspicions that he was a pawn in a much larger Vatican intrigue involving infighting in the papal court and alleged corruption at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church. Despite the Vatican's desire to quickly turn the page on one of the worst scandals in its recent history, the trial of Paolo Gabriele for leaking sensitive documents has left many questions unanswered, leading some to call it a whitewash. ...

Pope launches drive to reclaim lapsed Western Catholics Posted: 07 Oct 2012 06:45 AM PDT VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict launched a campaign to bring lapsed believers back to the Roman Catholic fold on Sunday, opening a major convention of bishops on what the Vatican has termed the "new evangelization" of the developed world. The Church is battling losses to its practicing flock in former strongholds in Europe, North America and Latin America in the face of sex abuse scandals, increasing secularism, rival faiths and open dissent against Church teachings on homosexuality and its ban on a female priesthood. ...

Pope names 2 church doctors: preacher St. John of Avila and mystic St. Hildegard of Bingen Posted: 07 Oct 2012 06:30 AM PDT VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI named two new "doctors" of the church Sunday, conferring one of the Catholic Church's highest honours on a 16th-century Spanish preacher and a 12th-century German mystic who wasn't even officially recognized as a saint until earlier this year.

Pope names 2 doctors of church, a top church honor Posted: 07 Oct 2012 06:19 AM PDT Pope Benedict XVI named two new "doctors" of the church Sunday, conferring one of the Catholic Church's highest honors on a 16th-century Spanish preacher and a 12th-century German mystic who wasn't even officially recognized as a saint until earlier this year.

Can a dying language revive Lebanon's Christian population? Posted: 07 Oct 2012 06:00 AM PDT Lebanon's most prominent Christian group, the Maronites, used to be so influential that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat quipped that "The road to Jerusalem passes through Jounieh," referring to a town north of Beirut that was a stronghold for Lebanese Christian militias.

Pope names 2 doctors of church, church's top honor Posted: 07 Oct 2012 03:42 AM PDT Pope Benedict XVI has named two new "doctors" of the church, conferring the Catholic Church's highest honor on a 16th-century Spanish preacher and a 12th— century German mystic who wasn't even officially recognized as a saint until earlier this year.

Mormon church lowers age requirements for missionaries Posted: 06 Oct 2012 07:00 PM PDT SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - Mormon leaders on Saturday lowered the age requirements for full-time missionaries in a change that could swell the ranks of the church's messengers around the world. All 18-year-old men in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will now be allowed to serve missions and women can do so at the age of 19, Thomas Monson, the church's president, told members at a conference in Salt Lake City. The previous age requirements for serving as Mormon missionaries was 19 for men and 21 for women. ...

You are subscribed to email updates from Religion News Headlines - Yahoo! News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610