FaithWorld

(Pope Benedict XVI posts his first tweet using an iPad tablet after his Wednesday general audience in Paul VI’s Hall at the Vatican December 12, 2012. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano)

Pope Benedict urged Catholics on Thursday to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to win converts, as he launched his own smartphone app streaming live footage of his speeches.

The websites – often associated with endless postings of idle gossip and baby photos – could be used as “portals of truth and faith” in an increasingly secular age, the pontiff said in his 2013 World Communications Day message.

“Unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people,” the 85-year old Pope said in the a letter published on the Vatican’s website.

The Holy See has become an increasingly prolific user of social media since it launched its ‘new evangelization’ of the developed world, where some congregations have fallen in the wake of growing secularization and damage to the Church’s reputation from a series of sex abuse scandals.

(Ken Smolka, who was abused by a priest as a child, speaks during a news conference with other victims and supporters of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California, January 22, 2013. REUTERS/Bret Hartman)

Victims of pedophile priests have called  for renewing a criminal investigation into the role of Catholic Church leaders in Los Angeles, including Cardinal Roger Mahony, in covering up child sexual abuse as revealed in newly released Church records.

Documents made public on Monday showed that Mahony, then archbishop of the nation’s largest Catholic archdiocese, worked with a top adviser to shield known molesters in the clergy from law enforcement scrutiny in the 1980s.

(A Sabah Christian reads from a prayer book with an Arabic word “Allah” in reference to God, at a church in Tambunan September 16, 2012. REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad)

Malaysia’s Bar Council said on Wednesday an independent member of parliament should be prosecuted on grounds he called for the mass burning of Bibles as religious tensions flare ahead of a tight election which must be held within months.

Ibrahim Ali, the head of Perkasa, a group that champions rights of the ethnic Malay Muslim majority and has close links to the ruling coalition, was reported in media as advocating Muslims should seize and burn copies of Bibles which use the word “Allah” to refer to God.

(The Leipzig Disputation of 1519 between Martin Luther (R) and Catholic theologian Johannes Eck (L), by Julius Hübner) 

Two leading Lutheran clerics have rejected suggestions from the Vatican that it could create a subdivision for converted Lutherans similar to its structures for Anglicans who join the Roman Catholic Church.

The dispute, concerning tiny numbers of believers but major issues in ecumenical relations, comes as the churches mark the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity this week.

(An Israeli soldier walks towards a voting booth to cast her ballot at a polling station in a military base in southern Israel January 21, 2013. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun )

An Israeli panel weighed a request on Sunday to disqualify a candidate of a powerful far-right party from running in a January 22 election for alluding in a speech to the possibility of seeing one of Islam’s holiest shrines in Jerusalem “blown up.”

The controversy is over a United States-born parliamentary nominee with the pro-settler Jewish Home party, one of the more serious contenders against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though polls still predict he will win Tuesday’s vote.

(Choi Gyeong-ja, who lives alone, watches TV in her apartment in Seocho-gu, adjacent to the posh Gangnam suburb, in Seoul January 16, 2013. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won)

When South Korean widow Yoon Sook-hee, 62, died after a bout of pneumonia in mid-January, she joined a growing number of old people in this Asian country who die alone and was cremated only thanks to the charity of people who never knew her.

Once a country where filial duty and a strong Confucian tradition saw parents revered, modern day South Korea, with a population of 50 million, has grown economically richer, but family ties have fragmented. Nowadays 1.2 million elderly South Koreans, just over 20 percent of the elderly population, live – and increasingly die – alone.

Allahabad, India

By Ahmad Masood

The Maha Kumbh Mela, or the Grand Pitcher Festival, is one of the biggest gatherings of people on earth; it takes place every 12 years and goes on for 55 days, in one of four cities in India : Allahabad, Ujjain, Haridwar and Nashik.

I moved to India from Afghanistan last year and the Mela, as it is called, was one of the assignments I wanted to cover.

My memories of the word “Mela” come from the times when I used to watch lots of Bollywood movies. Some of these movies would show brothers separated during this massive, chaotic gathering at childhood and then re-united decades later as adults.

(Sufi cleric and leader of the Minhaj-ul-Quran Muhammad Tahirul Qadri addresses his supporters from behind the window of an armoured vehicle after his meeting with members of Pakistan’s coalition government on the fourth day of protests in Islamabad January 17, 2013. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro )

A cleric who has been pushing for electoral reforms in Pakistan will resort to street protests aqain if the government does not abide by an agreement that eased a political crisis, an aide said on Friday.

Muhammad Tahirul Qadri, who has a history of ties with the military, reached a deal with Pakistan’s ruling coalition on Thursday that will give his party some say over the formation of a caretaker government ahead of elections this spring. Qadri’s party may also participate in the elections.

(Stephan Ackermann, Bishop of Trier attends a news conference on the launching of a telephone hotline for victims of sexual abuse, in south western German city of Trier March 30, 2010. (Text reads: “victims of sexual abuse”) REUTERS/Johannes Eisele)

Germany’s Roman Catholic Church has shut a national hotline for victims of sexual abuse by priests because demand for it has dropped since the peak of the scandal in 2010, the bishop overseeing the project said.

The Church plans to continue studying clerical sex abuse and is in contact with potential research partners after sacking the criminologist it originally hired for an independent report on the issue, Bishop Stephan Ackermann told journalists.

(Cardinal Sean Brady speaks to members of the media outside Armagh cathedral in northern Ireland May 2, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer)

Pope Benedict on Friday appointed the new head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland to succeed Cardinal Sean Brady, whose tenure has been plagued by scandal over the sexual abuse of children on the predominantly Roman Catholic island.

The Vatican said Monsignor Eamon Martin, 51, had been named “coadjutor” archbishop of Armagh, meaning he will automatically succeed Brady when he retires next year.