Monday’s RNS report starts with a story by Katherine Boyle about a pilgrim on a trek to experience 365 Catholic churches in 365 days: David Heimann is not your ordinary pilgrim. Every day, the Illinois native walks into a different Roman Catholic church. Afterward, he turns to the Internet to blog about his experience, providing links to pictures of the churches through Google Earth. Heimann left his job at a Catholic church in Chicago to embark upon a yearlong, high-tech pilgrimage that will take him to 365 churches in 35 countries across five continents. “Sometimes … we become so focused on our immediate experience of church that our only community is the one we go to every Sunday,” Heimann said. “As you look across the United States and across the world, of course (the church) is thriving with great diversity, and it’s easy to show on a Web site.”

Boyle also reports on the religion training being given to employees at the Justice and Homeland Security departments: The departments of Justice and Homeland Security have begun training employees to better understand and protect the civil liberties of American Muslims, Sikhs and other minority ethnic and religious groups in the wake of Sept. 11. Responding to increased incidents of prejudice, federal officials are attempting to involve the communities in homeland security efforts “in a positive way,” said Daniel Sutherland, officer for civil rights and civil liberties at Homeland Security. “We emphasize to our work force that we are not asking them to engage in something that is politically correct or what some people call sensitivity training; we’re just trying to give them the skills they need to do their jobs most effectively.”

The first Catholic priest to serve in Congress has died, report Adelle M. Banks and Melissa Stee: The Rev. Robert F. Drinan, the first Roman Catholic priest to serve as a voting member of the U.S. Congress, died Sunday (Jan. 28) in a Washington hospital. Drinan, who represented Massachusetts as a Democrat for a decade starting in 1971, suffered congestive heart failure and pneumonia in the 10 days before his death, said the Rev. John Langan, rector of the Georgetown University Jesuit Community, of which Drinan was a member. The Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center, used to have lunch with Drinan, whose “distinguished life” included serving as a lawyer and a spokesman for human and civil rights. “He wasn’t in Congress representing the Catholic Church,” said Reese, a fellow Jesuit.”He was representing the people of his district and the good of the country as he saw it.”