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Translator leaves popes in Hell but saves Islam's prophet from perditionUTRECHT, Netherlands (ChurchMilitant.com) - A new Dutch translation of the Divine Comedy has erased the name of Muhammad from the opus magnum of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri to prevent the epic poem from becoming "unnecessarily offensive" to Muslims. Translator Lies Lavrijsen told Belgian Radio 1 that she expunged the founder of Islam from her translation to give it the "widest possible accessibility," particularly for "a younger audience." "We knew that if we left this passage as it is, we would have unnecessarily hurt a large part of the readers,"...

On the evening of Good Friday, a man on the run from a death sentence wakes up in a dark forest, lost, terrified and besieged by wild animals. He spends an infernal Easter week hiking through a dismal cave, climbing up a grueling mountain, and taking what you might call the long way home. It all works out for him, though. The traveler returns from his ordeal a better man, determined to help others learn from his experience. He writes a book about his to-hell-and-back trek, and it's an instant best-seller, making him beloved and famous. For 700 years, that...

"Through me the way into the suffering city, Through me the way to the eternal pain, Through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; My maker was divine authority, The highest wisdom, and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, And I endure eternally. Abandon every hope, ye who enter here."

A Muslim rights advocate has scored a victory over the Catholic Church and conservative Italians, winning a court ruling that will remove crucifixes from the state primary school his children attend. "The presence of the symbol of the cross shows the will of the state to put Catholicism at the centre of the universe as the absolute truth," Judge Mario Montanaro ruled in the central town of L'Aquila. A concordat with the Vatican confirmed in 1984 that Catholicism was no longer the state religion. And laws introduced in 1920s fascist Italy, making crucifixes mandatory in classrooms, have been interpreted loosely...