The wheelchair-bound man that Pope Francis blessed in a controversial prayer many billed as a public exorcism earlier this month in St. Peter's Square, says the demons are still inside him.

Identified in a recent report only as Angel V., the 43-year-old Mexican father of two reportedly told Spanish-language newspaper El Mundo that the demons have withstood 30 exorcism attempts by 10 exorcists, including the Vatican's leading exorcist, Rev. Gabriel Amorth, who claims to have sent 160,000 demons to hell.

"I still have the demons inside me, they have not gone away," said Angel, while admitting that he is now able to walk since Pope Francis prayed over him on May 19 at the end of Mass.

The Vatican has maintained throughout media reports that the Pope did not perform an exorcism, which is the act of "casting out" evil spirits. What he did to Angel V., was the biblical practice of "laying on of hands" to convey blessings.

http://global.christianpost.com/news/man-in-pope-francis-exorcism-story-says-hes-still-possessed-by-demons-97065/

A Jewish leader expressed concern to Pope Francis on Monday over attempts to make a saint of World War Two-era Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.

Francis made no mention of his wartime predecessor during his talks with members of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), but the pontiff repeated the Roman Catholic Churchs condemnation of anti-Semitism.

The Jewish community continues to be concerned about efforts to canonise Pope Pius XII while innumerable documents pertaining to the history of the Church and the Jewish people during the dark years of the Holocaust still remain closed to outside scholarly investigation, IJCIC chairman Lawrence Schiffman told the pope.

The issue of whether the Vatican and the Church under Pius did all they could to help Jews has dogged Catholic-Jewish relations for decades. Pius became pontiff in 1939, the year World War Two broke out, and reigned until 1958.

http://www.jewishheritagemonth.com/jews/jews-tell-pope-francis-of-concerns-over-possible-sainthood-for-pius-xii.php

Young-earth creationists claim that the being who made the Earth and humankind is neither trustworthy nor honest. Their concept is of a God who makes the universe look like it is a particular age, and the Earth look like it is a particular age, even though they were created much more recently, and then condemns people for believing that evidence.

Young-earth creationists do not believe the Bible's testimony (in particular in Romans 1) that the Creator can be known through observation of and reflection on the created order.

Young-earth creationists believe that the Creator responded to human sin by introducing flesh-eating bacteria, killer viruses, hurricanes, tornados, floods, and carnivores into the world, just to name a few things.

Young-earth creationists believe that it is perfectly acceptable to repeat lies, promote misunderstandings, distort scientific publications, demean the character and credibility of Christians as well as others who work in the natural sciences.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2013/06/do-young-earth-creationists-worship-the-devil.html

Every Sunday around the country pastors use Christian-themed rock music to engage their parishioners. Sounding much like standard top-40 pop music fare, these scripture-based tunes are also becoming more popular on the radio and with consumers.

However, as popular Christian worship music gains a larger audience, Ari Kelman, associate professor of education at Stanford, has uncovered a surprising paradox. The very musicians, songwriters and music producers who create the music are increasingly sensitive to the "precarious relationship between rock music and worship," Kelman said.

Kelman, the director of a new doctoral program in Stanford's Graduate School of Education that integrates education and Jewish studies, has found that evangelical musicians, like any other musical artists, aim to make the very best music they can. They hope their music will "at best, lead people in prayer, and at least, not mislead them," Kelman said.

But it is this decidedly secular approach to music production that causes industry professionals who produce spiritual music to question the role that worship songs have assumed in the church.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/june/commercial-christian-rock-060313.html

The summer solstice, 21 June, is one of the most important dates in the calendar for many followers of ancient religions, and it's a special time for people in Greece who worship the country's pre-Christian gods.

Along with a few thousand others he is taking part in the Prometheia festival, which celebrates the ancient Greek hero Prometheus, who helped humans by stealing fire from the gods.

It's the most important annual festival for followers of The Return of the Hellenes - a movement trying to bring back the religion, values, philosophy and way of life of ancient Greece, more than 16 centuries after it was replaced by Christianity.

These people consider Greece to be a country under Christian occupation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22972610

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Stanislav Zvolensky, the Roman Catholic archbishop of the Slovak capital here, was thrilled when he was invited to Brussels three years ago to discuss the fight against poverty with the insistently secular bureaucracy of the European Union.

“They let me in wearing my cross,” the archbishop recalled.

It therefore came as a rude surprise when, late last year, the National Bank of Slovakia announced that the European Commission, the union’s executive arm, had ordered it to remove halos and crosses from special commemorative euro coins due to be minted this summer.

The coins, designed by a local artist, were intended to celebrate the 1,150th anniversary of Christianity’s arrival in Slovak lands but have instead become tokens of the faith’s retreat from contemporary Europe. They featured two evangelizing Byzantine monks, Cyril and Methodius, their heads crowned by halos and one’s robe decorated with crosses, which fell foul of European diversity rules that ban any tilt toward a single faith.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/world/europe/a-more-secular-europe-divided-by-the-cross.html?hp&_r=0

HOUSTON – In nearly 20 years of being a pastor’s wife, Angie Dennis said she doesn’t remember a single instance of a young woman coming to her and saying, “Miss Angie, my husband is struggling with pornography.”

Perhaps they have been ashamed, scared, embarrassed or too paralyzed to take action. Or maybe they simply didn’t know what to do.

Dennis, whose husband Jay Dennis launched the Join One Million Men movement at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 11-12 in Houston, is hopeful women will pray up, speak up and join the fight against pornography in a way that will capture hearts and minds for generations to come.

“As moms and grandmothers, we should be angry – righteously angry about this,” Dennis told Baptist Press where Join One Million Men staffed a booth in the SBC exhibit hall. “These pornographers are trying to steal the purity from our sons and grandsons. Every woman should be doing whatever we can to stop it.”

http://www.brnow.org/News/June-2013/Women-to-battle-pornography-with-prayer

The issue has been brought into the spotlight by a petition which has been lodged at the Scottish Parliament, supported by Secular Scotland – a lobby group campaigning for French-style separation of church and state – calling for a system in which parents would have to choose to "opt-in" if they want their children to participate in religious observance, for example in assemblies. Parents currently have the legal right to opt out and request that they do not want their child to do take part.

Secular Scotland, however, has emphasised that it wants teaching in the classroom on religious issues to continue on courses such as religious education. However, a separate petition to Edinburgh City Council by secularists is calling for an end to all religious observance in the city's schools.

In response to the moves, the Catholic Church and Free Church of Scotland have now said that secularists should set up their own "non-faith" schools instead.

Michael McGrath, director of the Scottish Catholic Education Service, said religious observance was part of the "fabric of the community life" in Catholic schools and they would contest any effort to remove the statutory requirement for it. Some commentators believe that, after gay marriage, the issue of religious observation in schools may be the next battleground when it comes to "culture wars" in Scotland.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/the-new-battle-over-religion-in-schools.21292976

An effort to amend the marriage laws in Israel has been delayed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Currently in Israel, it is illegal for two people of the same sex to marry. It is also illegal for two people of different religions to marry, and it is also illegal for people who do not belong to an organized religion to marry.

He stated that the reason for this delay is that there was no consensus among his coalition’s factions regarding the issue and that he was willing to move forward on such a bill only after a consensus could be reached. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni was set to present the bill to the committee on Sunday.

This seems unlikely to happen given that much of his coalition’s support comes from within the more socially conservative segments of the Israeli political scene.

http://lezgetreal.com/2013/06/netanyahu-delays-marriage-equality-bill-because-of-lack-of-consensus/

How many gun rights activists does it take to change a light bulb? 301. 100 to blame the burned out bulb on a gun-free zone; 100 to call the replacement a threat to their constitutional rights, 100 to post prepper remarks about Hitler and the ATF and 1 to change a light bulb.

Anyone who covers the gun debate gets a volume of threatening and repetitive emails that seem like they are written by one person with 12,000 different signatures. Passionate and inchoate, the writer is both a "tough guy" not to be messed with and a victim whose "rights" are being violated. Make up your mind!

He is terrified of gun grabbers and the government who want to disarm him. (Psychology books have a lot to say about that.) He is terrified of "bad guys" even though he is in a rural or suburban setting that is virtually crime-free. He is a classic bully with a high fear level that only subsides when he acts fierce and makes others scared. He only feels safe if he can "carry" everywhere and becomes enraged at places that ban guns. He has a huge amount of time on his hands to "defend" gun rights and seems to lack a day job.

But despite all their bluster, carriers do not make themselves or others safe. If carrying made someone safe, no one from President Reagan to Chris Kyle to Sean Collier, the officer allegedly killed by the Boston bombing suspects, would be shot. Nor are carriers trained like the Secret Service, Kyle or law enforcement personnel. Yet despite fallen officers and carriers whose weapons were used against them, the myth that carriers protect themselves and others continues. When a 20/20 special revealed that trained gun carriers could not stop an assailant they knew would attack , there was a cascade of "yes buts" from gun rights activists, rejecting the terms of shootout. Maybe the assailant should have approached from two blocks away and yelled "draw."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Gun-Carry-Extremists-Cau-by-Martha-Rosenberg-130522-853.html