In the wake of disaster, even proudly secular Japan will be turning toward ancient traditions such as Buddhism and Shintoism, according to CNN and USA Today. Christians in Japan continue to look for survivors, as U.S.-based religious relief organizations began to send teams to the devastated nation.

In other news, the Vatican kicked off its countdown to Pope John Paul II’s beatification by posting a YouTube video his first papal speech.

Hearings began in Philly for the first ever Roman Catholic official charged with endangering children for allegedly transferring predator priests, the AP reports.

About 900 members of the Church of England have taken the first step toward converting to Catholicism, according to the AP. A Catholic cardinal in England says 10 Downing Street has an “anti-Christian foreign policy.”

More than a dozen states are considering measures to ban Sharia, according to NPR. Malaysia agreed to return 35,000 Bibles seized in a dispute over their use of the word “Allah” as a translation for God. Egypt’s military has started rebuilding a church burned down in a dispute between Christians and Muslims, a military official told CNN.

Mormon Tea Partiers are gunning for the state’s national pols, including Hatch, Romney and Huntsman. Newt Gingrich, a Catholic, is courting a Texas pastor who has referred to Catholicism as “a false cult.”

A Baltimore public school is praying for better test scores and has succeeded thus far only in rousing church-state separationists.

Parents of a terminally ill Canadian boy have transferred him to a Catholic hospital in the U.S. after an Ontario court ruled doctors could remove the breathing tube that keeps him alive.

The remains of a revered French nun who died more than 100 years ago are headed for the Holy Land.

Two Nebraska inmates have succeeded in getting a pagan religion recognized by state prison officials. The religion, called Theodish Belief, uses for its ceremonies drinking horns, a boar’s tusk, a hobby horse and organic food.

The cynic in me suspects that some of these inmate First Amendment claims are desparate attempts to avoid prison food. The hobby horse? Who knows.