Various blogs are mourning the recent loss of Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s diplomat to the U.S.:

“Had he lived, Pietro Sambi would have surely received a cardinal’s red hat. But he will be laid to rest with the love and respect due a true churchman. May he be received into the company of Christ and his saints.”

Meanwhile, Religious Dispatches raises questions about religious freedom after an Austrian man fought for his right to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his driver’s license photo. He claimed it was his religious right as a Pastafarian, an atheist-themed religion:

“The affair raises questions that go beyond the jokey ‘church’-questions with which every society must grapple: What is religious freedom? Does it entitle some people to special protection under the law, and if so, which people? We can persist in drawing increasingly arbitrary lines between Rastafarian and Pastafarian, between the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist and the Church of Scientology, or we can join the few pioneering scholars of religion and the law who have found another way. The solution is that no one is entitled to religious freedom because there is no such thing as religious freedom.”

Robert Jones at the Washington Post On Faith blog asks once again if Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has a “Mormon Problem”:

“Much ink has already been spilled about the challenge Mitt Romney may face because of negative public perceptions of his Mormon faith. But the new PRRI/RNS Religion News Survey, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service, shows that these concerns cannot be looming large at this point in the campaign-only four-in-10 Americans correctly identify Romney’s religion as Mormon. 10 percent identify him as either Protestant or Catholic, and 46 percent say they don’t know what his religious beliefs are.”

Also at the Washington Post, debates still rage about the religious beliefs of the Anders Behring Breivik, the accused killer in the recent tragedy in Norway. Some adamantly assert that he is anything but Christian:

“To label Breivik a ‘Christian’ requires a depraved understand of what it means to be a Christian. At a minimum, a Christian must profess to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior.”

…While others at the New York Times say that his beliefs, whatever they may be, are the result of a “Blogosphere of Bigots“:

“The racism and bigotry that have simmered for years on anti-Islamic and anti-immigration Web sites in Norway and other European countries and in the United States made it possible for him to believe he was acting on behalf of a community that would thank him. As John Donne famously put it, ‘No man is an island … every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.'”

In twitter news, USA Today notes that tweeting Muslims can start reading the Quran in 140-character snippets during Ramadan next month:

“In 2009, Hussein Rashid, a professor of Islamic Studies at Virginia Theological Seminary, noticed rabbis using Twitter to highlight snippets of Torah text to celebrate Shavuot, when Jews say Moses received God’s word at Mount Sinai.

‘I saw they were creating a virtual way to pray and study together, and I thought it would be fun to invite a few friends to tweet the Quran for Ramadan. By the next year we had hundreds posting at #Quran and it will be even bigger this year,’ he says.”

Finally, the Tweet of the Day comes from author, columnist and Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who confounded his followers with confounding spiritual wisdom:

@rabbirami If you believe something’s impossible, it becomes impossible. Which is of course impossible. #quote

As always, remember to follow us at @religionnewsnow!