Dancing priests! * Puppies! * Papal empanadas! : Thursday’s Roundup

(RNS) A little something to brighten your day, scratch your head or send you back under the covers, depending on your mood. All in today's Roundup.

You can thank our friends over at Crux for this nugget of morning sunshine:

Take that, Sister Cristina!


Speaking of the Madonna covergirl, Mark Silk compares her to Soeur Sourire, the singing Belgian nun who’s “Dominique” will get stuck in your head like a bad cold. Both women, he says, “came on the scene at a time when their Church was figuring out how to acculturate itself to the modern world.”

Meanwhile, in other news …

From the Dept. of Good News

Think the media concentrates too much on the trivial and negative? Perhaps, so here’s your feel-good story of the day: The NYT profiles the rise of Justus Uwayesu, a Rwandan orphan living in a garbage dump who’s now studying at Harvard.

Or, if you’re like me and think that food is its own religion, you can now sample from the pope’s table (Francis’ empanadas! Benedict’s pastries! John Paul’s pierogies!) in a new cookbook authored by a member of the elite Swiss Guards.

Over at HuffPo, my traveling companion Jaweed Kaleem writes about the Hindu festival of Diwali: “As America’s 1.8 million Hindus celebrate Diwali, also known as Deepavali, this week, many are taking advantage of the holiday’s popularity to not only teach others about their faith, but to take a deeper dive into it themselves.”

From the Dept. of Bizarre

So, the latest figure in Hong Kong’s standoff with student protestors? Kinky-haired saxophonist Kenny G. Didn’t know this: “In one of the more inexplicable mysteries of Chinese culture, his 1989 saxophone ballad “Going Home” has for decades oozed from speakers across Chinese public spaces at closing time, setting off rapid exits by the masses. The song has no lyrics, yet somehow, when it is played in a mall, Chinese shoppers know what to do. They go home.”

NiqabIf you’re going to the opera in Paris, make sure you leave your full-face veil at home, or else you won’t be let in. With one caveat: “Naturally, in the case of employees of the Opera, professional clothing or artistic costumes are exempt from this ban.”

Not sure if this is good or bad news, so we’ll file it here: Our colleague Brian Pellot stumbles on a controversy in Malaysia, where a come-pet-a-dog event suddenly goes wrong for local Muslims.

Equally unsure of where this belongs: Does size matter? Tobin Grant and Ed Stetzer (a brain trust if we’ve ever seen one) chew over membership and financial stats for churches.

From the Dept. of Bad News

Canadian officials are trying to figure out why a Muslim convert, identified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, opened fire in Ottawa, killing a Canadian solider before he was shot by guards. Our friends to the north now worry that the fight abroad has now come home.


Not good news, if you’re a woman trying to climb the ladder at an evangelical nonprofit: “A new study by researchers at Gordon College and Wheaton College has confirmed what many have long suspected — that many evangelical institutions lag far behind the general marketplace in leadership roles for women.”

One of the things I love about The Forward is their ability to find a Jewish angle on just about anything. Like this: There are no Jewish winners of any Nobel Prize this year. But don’t fret: “This single shutout year, on its own, means nothing. The same thing happened in 1999 and before that in 1991.”

Whoops. A former missionary is facing 20 years in prison for bilking a Southern Baptist agency out of nearly $300,000 using false reimbursement requests.

Remember the Peeping Tom rabbi, accused of spying on women in his D.C. synagogue’s mikvah? Now there’s concern he may have also targeted college students during a field trip. Oy.

And on that note, the weekend is nearly in sight. Make sure we have your email address so we can send you the Roundup every day for free. And always feel free to send us tips, suggestions, spitballs or love notes.

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