The Washington Post's Acts of Faith offers breaking and ongoing news, analysis and opinion about major religion stories.
Francis allowed priests to hear confessions for abortion for one year. Now, he's making that permanent.
"We suspect it's motivated by a desire to discriminate against Georgia Muslims,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations for Georgia's executive director said before state Rep. Jason Spencer abandoned his own proposal.
Highlights
Pope Francis will celebrate the first papal Mass in her shrine outside Santiago on Tuesday.
I believe enabling this hatred was not your desire. You were just voting for the lesser evil. But if you do not confront racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia wherever you see it, then your vote for the lesser evil will become a vote for hate.
The idea has drawn comparisons to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
This rabbi says he's studying civil disobedience.
"My judgment is that God is doing something beautiful here,” the pastor said. “I'm going to err on the side of love and grace."
Churches jockeyed for the Obamas and the Clintons.
The note was left on the family's front door and referred to them as "terrorists."
"Just because the outside of the walls are defaced doesn't mean that the inside has changed," said the Rev. Kelsey Hutto of St. David's Episcopal Church. "We still are called to love as Christ loves us, and that's our call, as Christians."
"I think Christians took a big stand this time and said we’re going to stand up for our faith."
More religion news
Pope Francis is allowing all priests to absolve the faithful of the “grave sin” of abortion, extending indefinitely the special permission he had granted for the duration of the just-ended Holy Year of Mercy.
Pope Francis is allowing all priests to absolve ‘grave sin’ of abortion even after Holy Year of Mercy has ended.
It didn’t take a divisive presidential election to get Mark Chester interested in immigrants. Chester has been celebrating immigrants for years, making it his mission to photograph two people from every nation.
Pope Francis says sleeping six hours “like a log” each night is part of his secret for managing job stress.
Pope Francis pulled shut the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday, formally ending the Holy Year of Mercy he declared to stress the need for greater reconciliation and forgiveness in his church and in the world.
President-elect Donald Trump and Mitt Romney met Saturday at the billionaire’s golf club in New Jersey, both emerging with smiles and a public handshake but no word on what, if any, role the 2012 GOP hopeful might play in the new administration.
Pope Francis warned against what he called a “virus of polarization” and hostility in the world targeting people of different nationalities, races or beliefs, as he led a ceremony Saturday giving the Roman Catholic Church 17 new cardinals from six continents.
More than 400 scarves were hanging on a park fence earlier this month in downtown Manchester, waiting for people with chilly necks and shoulders to snatch them up for the winter season.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for leadership posts threaten national unity and promise to turn back the clock on progress for racial, religious and sexual minorities, civil rights leaders and others said Friday after his nomination of Alabama U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general.
Lawyers for a Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric accused by Turkey of masterminding a failed coup said Friday they’re confident he won’t be extradited, even though President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for national security adviser recently denounced him as a “masked source of terror” and argued the U.S. shouldn’t allow him to stay.
Advocates accused a Georgia lawmaker of targeting Muslim women with proposed changes to a 1951 state law passed to unmasked the Ku Klux Klan, creating a backlash that prompted the Republican legislator to quickly discard the idea.
The Latest on a Georgia lawmaker’s proposal to update a 1951 state law passed to unmask the Ku Klux Klan (all times local):
A Massachusetts church where civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois once attended services will be bought and preserved.
New York’s Yeshiva (yeh-SHEE’-vuh) University has chosen the head of a Jewish heritage center in Israel as its new president.
Members of a New York City synagogue have sifted through 300 tons of garbage at an upstate landfill in an unsuccessful search for a religious item that fell into a trash can.
