Friday’s Religion News Roundup: Homeless haircuts * Francis & the Falklands * Molesting monks

You know it's the first official day of summer when the news slows down, but there's still some news in today's Roundup you'll want to see.

 <a href=image of "Thank God it's Friday" via Shutterstock " >

Meet Imam Dayaiee Abdullah, quite possibly the world’s only openly gay Islamic cleric. He’ll do gay Muslim weddings and Skype counseling to gay Muslims overseas.

Remember the nice guy in Hartford who was told he couldn’t provide free haircuts to the homeless? Well now he can. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you,” says Anthony Cymerys, 82.


Mazel tov to Roy Medley, who was reelected to a fourth two-year term as president of the American Baptist Churches USA.

Remember all those hopes that the Arab Spring would usher in greater freedom for religoius minorities across the Middle East? Yeah, not so much, says the Pew Research Center.

Troubling reports out of Bhutan over chronic sexual abuse of young Buddhist monks by their older superiors.

Here’s a headline that will make you stop short: Evangelicals in Georgia are blending incense, chanting choirs and a bishop in a big gray beard and flowing black robes. That’s Georgia as in post-Soviet, not Georgia as in peaches and pecans.

It’s not a Shabbat Shalom for Israel’s chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, who was placed under house arrest for five days as part of a bribery and graft investigation.

The Church of England says partnered gay men can still be considered for a bishop’s post — unless they don’t really want to consider said gay man for a bishop’s post.

Britain wants Argentine-born Pope Francis to stay out of the decades-old dispute between Argentina and the U.K. over who owns the Falkland Islands.


French President Francois Hollande says the pilgrimage town of Lourdes will be declared a disaster zone after flooding ravaged the shrine that attracts legions of pilgrims.

When you visit your favorite pilgrimage site, please thank God that it’s Friday — and if you can put in a good word for the RNS Roundup, that’d be cool, too. Happy weekend, y’all.

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