Davis school district says it will assess text after complaint for ‘pornographic or indecent materials’ under law passed last year A school district in Utah that last week banned the Bible from school libraries is now being asked to consider a further title for removal: the Book of Mormon. The Davis school district, which serves Davis county, north of Salt Lake City, said it was considering a new complaint demanding the removal of the foundational text of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ..read more

Youssef Mikhaiel is at risk of forced removal to Egypt before he marries Sarah Bradley A couple planning to marry soon could be forcibly separated by the Home Office because they are not cohabiting before their wedding. Sarah Bradley, 29, a British digital marketing teacher, and Youssef Mikhaiel, 28, an Egyptian man who graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in aeronautical engineering, met in February 2022 through a Christian dating app ..read more

Amazon series Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets goes beyond the famous family into the fundamentalist ministry they represented Any casual purveyor of American cable television is probably familiar with the Duggar family – if not with the specifics of their juggernaut series on TLC, then with the sheer number of them. From 2007 until 2015, the Duggars, a highly conservative Christian baptist family from Arkansas, starred on a reality TV series titled after their ever-expanding number of children – first 17, then 18, then 19 Kids and Counting. They were the celebrity inverse to the many ..read more

The controversial film championed by the BJP is an Islamophobic fantasy Two weeks after I was born in the curfewed town of Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh, the Aligarh riots of 1990 broke out. What began as skirmishes exploded into widespread bloodletting after three leading Hindi daily newspapers published front-page headlines reporting the targeted killing of Hindus inside a hospital run by Muslims. Those killings turned out to be the fevered imaginings of two Hindu “eyewitnesses”. But the actual massacres ignited by this fake news eventually left about a hundred people dead, the vast majority of ..read more

Critics say the seeking of permanent stays in cases where perpetrators have died amount to ‘another layer of abuse’ for survivors and a failure of moral leadership Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast The Australian Lawyers Alliance is preparing to meet with the New South Wales attorney general to lobby for reform against the “disgraceful” tactics employed by churches and other institutions to prevent abuse survivors from pursuing justice. A Guardian investigation – based on interviews with 13 law ..read more

Gordon Williams describes the converted hut painted with wonderful frescoes by Italian prisoners of war in his local area, while Christine Hayes remembers how German prisoners helped out her parents Orkney is not unique in having a Catholic chapel built by prisoners of war (Letters, 26 May). In the village of Easton Grey in Wiltshire is a small industrial estate and agricultural yard that was once No 89 working camp. It held Italian prisoners of war who were trusted to leave the camp and work on the land. They converted a hut into a church, which they decorated with beautiful wall paintings. Y ..read more

Scorsese, cinema’s most mainstream Catholic director, angered Catholics globally with his 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ Martin Scorsese may follow his acclaimed crime epic about the killing of Native Americans in the US in the 1920s with another film about Jesus Christ, reports suggest. Scorsese, fresh from a rapturous reception for his Killers of the Flower Moon at the Cannes film festival, is currently in Italy attending a series of religious and cinematic events ..read more

Catholic church’s claim he could not have been an altar boy because he was baptised Anglican proved to be incorrect but delayed case for a year, in a legal move being heavily criticised Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast The Catholic church has been accused of causing added trauma to a survivor after it tried to thwart his case involving a notorious jailed paedophile priest by claiming he could not have been an altar boy because he was baptised in the Anglican church, a move that delayed the cas ..read more

She was 15 when she was last seen alive in Rome. Her brother explains why he backs a new theory featured in a TV show Not long before she disappeared in the summer of 1983, Emanuela Orlandi went to Piazza del Catalone, a small square just outside of the Vatican walls, to meet friends. There was still a party vibe during that sweltering June just a few weeks after AS Roma clinched the Serie A title. In a photograph taken at the time Orlandi, who was then 15, is wearing a headband in yellow and red, the football team’s colours, that her mother had made. It was one of the last photographs taken o ..read more

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s body was exhumed and found to be ‘incorrupt’, a sign of holiness and later justification for sainthood Hundreds of people in the US have traveled to a monastery in a small Missouri town to view a nun’s body that seemingly has no signs of decay four years after her death. Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster was the founder of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, a monastery in Gower, Missouri, about an hour outside of Kansas City ..read more