Michael GoldfarbMay 16, 2013 11:53

Hungarian government failing to shield Jews from right-wing hate

A new Human Rights Watch report says freedom of religion is under threat under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

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Participants of a demonstration of the Jobbik party hold a banner reading 'Go away merchants (Israeli)! This is our home-land!' in Budapest downtown, nearby the parliament building on May 4, 2013. Hundreds of Hungarians gathered Saturday in downtown Budapest for an anti-Zionist protest organised by the Jobbik party, just a day before a World Jewish Congress (WJC) meeting kicked off. (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images)

LONDON — Once again, Hungary's record on human rights is under fire. In a report released today, Human Rights Watch details threats to a wide range of freedoms since the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban forced through major constitutional changes after it took office in 2010.

One of the rights under threat, according to the report's author Lydia Gall, is freedom of religion.

Sasa MilosevicMay 15, 2013 11:49

Why Pope Francis isn't welcome in Serbia

The Catholic Church's alleged role in the Ustase slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Serbs during World War II has not been forgiven.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic Jasenovac

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Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic touches the ground with the name of Jasenovac concentration camp during his visit of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, which commemorates the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II, in Jerusalem on April 29, 2013. (Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images)

BELGRADE, Serbia — Though he washed the feet of a Serbian Muslim girl in an Italian prison on this year's Holy Thursday Mass, Pope Francis is still not on the road to visit Serbia.

Serbian ecclesiastical and political elite are still waiting for an official papal apology for crimes committed against Serbian Orthodox during World War II, and the pope has never received an official invitation to visit his more than 350,000 adherents in this Eastern European country.

Omar ShamoutMay 14, 2013 09:51

'Hipster Jesus' ad campaign: Trying too hard?

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn wants to attract young people back to the church.

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A 'hipster Jesus' message photographed in June 2011. (Brett Jordan/Courtesy)

LOS ANGELES — A new advertising campaign by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn labeling Jesus as “The Original Hipster” is creating a buzz, but will it attract the intended audience?

“Most Catholics,” wrote the diocese’s communication chief Msgr. Kieran Harrington, “see the church as archaic and not relevant, nor valuable, to their everyday lives.” Harrington said the diocese is taking the more modern approach of “poking fun” at itself and its hip location to draw more people to services.

Jason BerryMay 13, 2013 22:40

New Orleans' soulful second line tradition marred by violence

Those injured in the Mother's Day mass shooting include journalist Deborah Cotton, who has spoken eloquently against violence plaguing the city's storied jazz parades.

New Orleans Mother's Day second line 2013

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Kenneth Terry with the Treme Brass Band plays the trumpet on the cornor of North Villere and Frenchmen Street during a community response to a shooting during a Mother's Day parade, on May 13, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Nineteen people were injured during the shooting, including two children. (Sean Gardner/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW ORLEANS — Of the 19 people sent to local hospitals Sunday afternoon with gunshot wounds from a Mother’s Day march for a black parading club, most had gone home Monday, including a boy and a girl, age 10, with graze wounds.

But three people in critical condition will undergo further surgery at Interim LSU Public Hospital, a hospital spokesman said today on Nola.com. The shootings, which apparently stemmed from a grievance between two young men, make New Orleans the latest dateline in American’s lengthening saga of mass gun violence.

Kevin Douglas GrantMay 8, 2013 10:34

Finding religion in the Boston Marathon attack

Religious scholars at the Harvard Divinity School discussed the big question Tuesday night: Why?

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Boston Mayor Thomas Menino pauses after speaking at an interfaith prayer service for victims of the Boston Marathon attack titled "Healing Our City," at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on April 18, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Spencer Platt/AFP/Getty Images)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Speaking at the Harvard Divinity School about the role of religion in the Boston Marathon attack and its aftermath Tuesday night, Rabbi Sally Finestone offered specific advice for the clergy-to-be in the audience.

“People will come to you as religious leader and ask you, ‘How can God let this happen?’ she advised. “That’s the question that pastoral leaders will face after events like the marathon, which brings the question front and center.”

Jason BerryMay 7, 2013 21:43

Pope Francis to meet with head nuns as cardinal criticizes Vatican crackdown

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious was put under official supervision more than one year ago, accused of "radical feminism."

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Pope Francis arrives to lead a Holy Mass for Confraternities on May 5, 2013 at St Peter's Square at the Vatican. (Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images)

Should Pope Francis continue a punitive strike against the mainstream organization of American nuns? Is the survival of the group representing 57,000 liberal US nuns even on His Holiness' radar screen? And if not, how do the group's leaders put it there?

Matt ReesMay 5, 2013 09:38

Jerusalem's dwindling Christians celebrate the Holy Fire on Orthodox Easter

The annual rite at the 1500-year-old Church of the Holy Sepulcher attracted fewer local faithful as Christians across the region are caught up in various conflicts.

The annual rite for Orthodox Easter at the 1500-year-old Church of the Holy Sepulcher attracted fewer local faithful, as Christians across the region are caught up in various conflicts.

Michael GoldfarbMay 2, 2013 13:32

Exhibit highlights role of 'righteous Muslims' during the Holocaust

An exhibition touring British schools aims to combat anti-Semitism and set the record straight on Muslims who helped Jews survive during the Holocaust.

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A pamphlet developed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Faith Matters accompanies an exhibit currently touring British schools about 'righteous Muslims' during the Holocaust. (Screengrab)

LONDON — The tension from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long since spilled over into Europe.

The battleground is history, specifically the Holocaust. A strand of Muslim public opinion regards the murder of six million Jews in World War II as an unfair justification for establishing the state of Israel. The view that Muslims in Europe and the Middle East aided in the destruction of European Jewry is common in the Jewish community.

The truth is different. Some Muslims who lived under Nazi occupation helped their Jewish neighbors hide and survive. These "righteous Muslims," whose names are enshrined in the Garden of the Righteous at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, are the subject of an exhibition currently touring British schools.

Kevin Douglas GrantMay 1, 2013 15:48

Mexican priest Solalinde to lead immigration reform caravan across US

Father Alejandro Solalinde is known across Mexico for sheltering migrants from brutality, but much less so in America.

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Father Alejandro Solalinde, a Roman Catholic priest from Mexico, addresses supporters through the border fence between Calexico, California and Mexicali, Mexico. On April 30 he and a caravan of immigration reformers set out on a cross-country trip that will culminate in Washington, DC in late May. (Kevin Douglas Grant/GlobalPost)

CALEXICO, Calif. and MEXICALI, Mexico — The crowd pressed against the 17-foot border fence to get closer to the man they’d come to see. Chanting “Solalinde! Solalinde! Solalinde!” and holding bunches of white balloons, they celebrated the Mexican priest known across his home country for decades of work offering protection to migrants at great risk to himself.

Nick StreetApril 28, 2013 13:20

Boko Haram, West African terrorism and the push for amnesty

Muslim and Christian leaders seek a path toward peace after years of interreligious violence.

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Children sit in front of a burnt house in the remote northeast town of Baga on April 21, 2013 after two days of clashes between officers of the Joint Task Force and members of the Islamist sect Boko Haram on April 19 in the town near Lake Chad, 200 kms north of Maiduguri, in Borno State. Nigerian rescue workers set up temporary camps in Baga on April 25 and distributed aid to the masses displaced by brutal fighting that left 187 people dead. The bloodshed in Baga likely marked the deadliest-ever episode in the insurgency of Boko Haram, a radical group which has said it wants to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)

JOS, Nigeria – Worshippers filed past sentries armed with automatic weapons and filtered through a line of shoulder-high concrete pylons before reaching the headquarters of the Church of Christ in Nigeria. The pylons were installed in early 2012, after a car loaded with explosives rammed past the church compound’s main gate, killing four and sending dozens to the hospital.

Outside the main sanctuary, a bit of twisted wreckage from the blast was left in view as a ward against complacency.