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The Rev Andrew Foreshew-Cain had served as a vicar for around two decades until his fractious exit in 2017. His crime? Marrying his partner, Stephen, in 2014. While he kept his position at St Mary with All Souls, Kilburn, and St James’, West Hampstead, after his wedding, he says he was “blacklisted” from finding a new job. In 2017, he resigned, publicly condemning the church as “institutionally homophobic”. It was a bold statement, and one he knew would bar him from ever returning. While heterosexual priests can marry and have sex, gay clergy members are expected to remain unmarried and...

Caption: 'Sex Slaves in the Catholic Church' German-French channel Arte says it will fight to overturn a court injunction that prevents it from rebroadcasting the documentary, which accuses rogue priests of sexually abusing French nuns. A French television documentary that accuses Catholic priests of sexually abusing nuns has been pulled from the French-German television channel Arte after a priest filed a complaint with a German court. French director Marie-Pierre Raimbault and investigative journalist Eric Quintin shot the documentary, Sex Slaves in the Catholic Church, over three years, basing it on firsthand testimony of nuns who claim they were used as...

Complete title: When he was a priest, this N.J. teacher impregnated a 16-year-old. No, you can't fire him, school district is told. A veteran Burlington County teacher who had a baby with a 16-year-old girl while he was a Catholic priest nearly 30 years ago should not lose his job because of his past, a state arbitrator told the school district. Cinnaminson school officials brought up tenure charges against middle school teacher Joseph DeShan earlier this year after parents learned about his history as a priest in the diocese in Bridgeport, Connecticut. DeShan left the priesthood in 1994, four years...

Pope Francis donated $500,000 to Mexico-based projects to help migrant communities as media attention has faded, the Vatican said Saturday. The funds will be distributed between 27 projects associated with 16 Mexican dioceses and congregations, all of which asked for help to continue providing food, lodging, and basic necessities to those fleeing their home countries through Mexico. “In recent months, thousands of migrants have arrived in Mexico, having travelled more than 4,000 kilometers on foot and with makeshift vehicles from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Men and women, often with young children, flee poverty and violence, hoping for a better...

NEW YORK (AP) -- At least 120 priests accused of sexually abusing a child or having child pornography have worked in the Archdiocese of New York, the archdiocese said Friday in releasing a list of names that includes bishops, high school teachers, a scouting chaplain and a notorious cardinal. The release, from the nation's second-largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, follows more than 120 such disclosures from other dioceses around the country as the church reckons with demands for transparency about sex abuse by clergy. In a letter to church members, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said he realizes "the shame that has come...

Arson investigators in Pennsylvania are searching for clues after two fires broke out at one church. The first fire at the Pentecostal Church of Bethlehem was reported shortly after midnight on Tuesday, while the second fire was called in just before 2 a.m. on Thursday, said the Bethlehem Police Department. No injuries were reported. The Thursday morning fire, which was contained to the roof, was quickly extinguished, police said. In the first fire, thick black smoke was seen billowing from the building, but the fire had already burned itself out when first responders arrived, according to police. The blaze left...

COLOMBO (Reuters) -- Sri Lankan housewife Fathima Fazla thought of her neighbours in the grand three-storey home across the street as the wealthy celebrities of her humble Colombo suburb. She had no idea how infamous they would become. A person mourns at a grave of a victim, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, at Sellakanda Catholic cemetery in Negombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha Two brothers who lived at the white house on Mahawela Gardens have emerged as key players in suicide attacks on...

More than 20 people were injured at a church in Germany after mass panic ensued when a ‘mentally confused’ Somali stormed into an Easter service, shouting and throwing stones. Two dozen people were treated for injuries, including four hospitalised with minor injuries after the 36-year-old suspect burst into St Paul’s Church in Munich at 9.30 pm Saturday, about an hour into the Easter Vigil of its Croatian Catholic community. Local media said there was chaos when many of the approximately 500 people at the service were caught in a stampede to the church’s exit, with eyewitnesses recalling their terror as...

Police have confirmed that a fire in the French church of Notre-Dame de Grâce on Easter Sunday appears to have been intentionally set, making it the latest in a string of desecrations of Christian churches in the country. The fire was started in a large, wooden confessional around 4:30pm and proceeded to consume a dais in the presbytery of the eighteenth-century church located in the southern French town of Eyguières, near Provence. “Flames several meters high were coming out of the church,” said the mayor of Eyguières, Henri Pons, before a team of 30 firefighters with six vehicles arrived and...

The bombings in Sri Lanka have once again put a spotlight on the rising tide of violence against Christians all over the world. According to Open Doors USA, an average of 105 churches and/or Christian buildings are burned or attacked every month. That is more than three per day, and almost all of those attacks get ignored by the mainstream media in the western world. In addition, an average of 345 Christians are killed for faith-related reasons every single month. Of course these numbers will soon be out of date, because violence against Christians continues to escalate all over the...

I grew up attending a Fundamental, Independent Baptist church, and no, those aren’t capitalized by mistake. That’s because the words “Fundamental” and “Independent” were displayed prominently on our sign, our church bulletin, and anywhere else the church name appeared. It wasn’t just that we were “Baptist,” or even a “church” – because any ragamuffin group of heretics could band together and call themselves a “church” in these United States – no, we wanted the world to know we were “independent” of any top-down control, and we believed we had the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith. Of course, those were the...

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — By now, most Democratic presidential candidates have polished their stump speeches. But when they’re in South Carolina, they may need to add in a sermon. In a large and diverse primary field, White House hopefuls are angling to develop relationships with black churches. That’s because success in South Carolina, home to the nation’s first Southern presidential primary, could come down to connecting with politically influential churchgoing African Americans. “Candidates recognize that black churches are the places to be seen and heard,” said Bobby Donaldson, a professor of civil rights history at the University of South...

138 people have been killed in Sri Lanka, with more that 600 badly injured, in a terrorist attack on churches and hotels. The United States offers heartfelt condolences to the great people of Sri Lanka. We stand ready to help!

What happens when a nation loses its conscience? When the light barely shines in the darkness? When truth is obscured by lies? We can answer those questions with another question: What does America look like in 2019? We are a nation adrift. A nation confused. A nation in danger of completely losing our moral bearings. A nation where right is now wrong, and wrong is now right. A nation where evil is celebrated and virtue is denigrated. But I don’t primarily blame the society at large for these problems. I don’t primarily blame the people of the world (although, to...

It’s an 80-year low only because that’s when the subject first began being polled. In reality today’s percentage of church members is almost certainly the lowest in American history.This may help explain why a Catholic priest’s mention of “the body of Christ” this week somehow ended up being translated by the New York Times into “a statue of Jesus.” They probably had no frame of reference.That’s some graph. Normally with data related to matters of religious belief you’d expect to see a gradual slope downward, possibly starting in the 1960s. Not here. Church membership is cruising along steadily for...

A South Carolina church had three of its 125-year-old windows broken and was vandalized with Islamic-themed graffiti Sunday hours after celebrating Palm Sunday. "Submit to God thru Islam" and "Muhammed is his prophet" were spray-painted on the outside of Midway Presbyterian Church, according to local police. The Anderson Police Department is offering a reward for any information that leads to the arrest of the individuals who vandalized the church building.

A "climate of heightened sensitivity" and increasingly broad definitions of 'hate crime' are putting freedom of speech and belief at risk, the Catholic Church in Scotland has warned. The Church said there needed to be "room for debate and a robust exchange of views" as it warned that holding to Catholic beliefs, particularly on marriage or sexuality, may soon be deemed "an attempt to stir up hatred". The warning was made in a submission to the Scottish Government's consultation on hate crimes following a review last year by Lord Bracadale. The consultation, which closed last month, asked members of the...

Led by Ethos Church, a group of Nashville churches spent 30 days praying for their city. That's not unusual, because many churches around the world pray for their cities. What sets the group in Nashville apart is that they took it a step further and decided to pray for every single resident of the city. In fact, the participants of Awaken Nashville were encouraged to send postcards letting people know they prayed for them. Some Nashvillians, however, took umbrage at the prayer and postcards, deeming the whole enterprise intrusive and a violation of their privacy.Speaking to Religion News Service,...

Fire guts Paris’ historic St. Sulpice church Fire at the Saint Sulpice Church in Paris as recorded by a passerby Fire has been reported at Paris’ historic St. Sulpice church, built in the 19th Century. According to Le Parisien, firefighters are extinguishing the blaze, which burst through the doors of the 19th Century building. The wooden doors were on fire, and a stained glass window was damaged. The rest of the damage “seems minor,” the daily newspaper said. Dramatic footage shared on social media shows the interior of the church in flames, with smoke billowing up to its arched roof....

praying for more By Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com and Lori M. Nichols | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com | Posted January 27, 2019 at 07:00 AM | Updated January 28, 2019 at 10:22 AM 0 shares 19 Comments Mullica Hill Baptist Church, Mullica Hill. (Tim Hawk | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) I was looking for a sign from God. Not a literal sign from the Almighty, though if He happened to enlighten me with something I wouldn't mind. No, I was looking for an actual sign -- in front of a church. Most church signs...