You have until Sunday to vote in our Pope Francis Art Contest — 45 entries, 6,600+ votes so far. The voting ends on Sunday, so cast your votes now!
#20 – Santo by Rob Hatem, Kansas City, Mo. (Acrylic Paint) – “‘Santo’ is Spanish for “saintly” and this is a portrait of Pope Francis in the spirit of Saint Francis.”
(we’re doing something a little different today, sprinkling the Roundup with some of the entries. C’mon, you know you wanna vote!)
Leith Anderson, who heads the National Association of Evangelicals, says 2/3 of the evangelical leaders he surveyed don’t support a strike on Syria, but they’re just as conflicted as the rest of us.
NY Cardinal Timothy Dolan, back home in Milwaukee, says on the church’s biggest problems is people who left because of they were “nauseated” by the “sinful” behavior of clergy sexual abuse.
Not as conflicted: the so-called NALT Christians — Not All (Christians are) Like That — who support gays and lesbians.
Crystal Cathedral founder Robert Schuller has stage-4 cancer, his daughter says.
The heavy metal band Lamb of God (ever heard of them?) has been banned from playing in Malaysia because local authorities think the Richmond, Va.-based group insulted Islam a few years back.
New Mexico’s 33 counties have asked the state’s highest court to say, once and for all, whether they can issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples; so far eight counties have done so.
The Jewish guy who heckled Anthony Weiner about his “Arab wife” says he stands by his outburst, saying “it’s just a feeling I have as a Jew.” Oy.
#13 – Adelante by Pat Marrin, Kansas City, Mo. (Pen on paper) – “Pope Francis announces in Spanish the theme of his papacy: “Adelante” — Forward.
He rides freely forward himself on this, his first and shortest encyclical.”
From the Dept. of Not Surprising But Still Significant: Southern Baptists say their military chaplains won’t be able to perform, endorse — or attend — gay weddings either on or off base.
A new report finds that bullying against Asian-American and Sikh students in New York City schools has doubled since 2009.
Pope Francis isn’t just all warm and cuddly: the crisis in Syria is forcing him to hone his credentials as a major world political leader.
Bashar al-Assad will never will a peace prize, but then again, neither will many of the brutal rebel forces in Syria’s bloody civil war.
Retired D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a sort of unofficial traveling diplomat, says we shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of Iraq in Syria and that it’s a fool’s errand to “go to war to make peace.” Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg says the U.S. bishops largely gave George W. Bush a “free pass” on Iraq.
It’s been a rough couple of months for Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, and our own Monique El-Faizy explains why they don’t seem to have a persecution complex.
Qanta Ahmed says the world (and Muslims) can’t surrender Islam to the Islamists. She also gets a prize for rockin’ Twitter handle: MissDiagnosis (she’s an M.D.)
#3 – A side of pope by Hamilton Cline, Daly City, Calif. (Digital) – “An illustration of the pope from the side.”
Brian Pellot sits down with the United Nations’ point man on religious freedom, Heiner Bielefeldt, to discuss the state of religious freedom around the world.
And with that, it’s off to the weekend. Normally this is where we’d ask for your email address to get the Roundup, but you get a reprieve today and instead we’re gonna hit you up to vote in the pope art contest. Vote early and vote often!
