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After two years of secret talks aimed at healing ties broken during the Great Schism of 1054, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, met in Cuba.

It was the first time in history that the leader of the Catholic Church has met with a Russian patriarch.

“It is with joy that we have met like brothers in the Christian faith,” the patriarch and pope wrote in a joint statement, “to discuss the mutual relations between the churches, the crucial problems of our faithful, and the outlook for the progress of human civilization.”

(The Christian Science Monitor) For years Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, worked from the shadows, conducting the nation’s battles from Afghanistan to Lebanon.

But today he is Iran’s celebrity general, a man elevated to hero status by a social media machine.

(The Christian Science Monitor) Unlike many animals, humans are part of complex social groups that extend beyond familial ties. But we didn't start out that way. 

Scientists, historians, and philosophers have long puzzled over how we came to have such large, complex societies. Some researchers have suggested that religion played a role in connecting people.

c. 2015 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

INDIANAPOLIS (RNS) The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the largest children’s museum in the world, may be a place for fun, but it has also addressed difficult subjects, including the Holocaust, segregation, and AIDS. For the past few months, the museum has taken on yet another potentially controversial subject: world religions.

c. 2016 Religion News Service

PARIS (RNS) Germany’s churches, long the most positive voices greeting waves of Middle Eastern refugees pouring into the country in recent months, have begun to admit the need to limit the flow now that public opinion towards the newcomers has turned from welcoming to wary.

c. 2015 USA Today

WASHINGTON — The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia could be a major setback for the conservative legal movement in the months ahead.

For the first time in 450 years, a citadel of Protestant worship in England—the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace in Canterbury—echoed to the sound of Roman Catholic prayers and music.

About 350 people assembled on February 9 inside the ornate palace, about 15 miles from London, as Cardinal Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, led a solemn vespers service, known in the Church of England as evensong.

c. 2016 Religion News Service

DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) The first lady of Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church offered two enduring images: her late husband’s smiling face lying in a casket, and the bullet holes that riddled the church walls when she went to clean out his office a week later.

“Clementa was a peaceful person,” said Jennifer Pinckney, the widow of pastor and South Carolina state senator Clementa Pinckney, during a visit to Duke University to talk about gun control, race, and faith. “He was all about peace.”

c. 2016 Religion News Service

MEXICO CITY (RNS) On a recent morning outside the Church of San Agustin in the middle-class neighborhood of Narvarte, two students sell bric-a-brac and blast the Beatles’ “Let It Be” through a smartphone hooked up to speakers.

When asked what Pope Francis’ first visit to the country as pontiff on Friday (February 12) means to them, they shrug.

On Fridays, the Boucherie de l’Argonne closes early. Its Muslim workers head to afternoon prayers and the Jewish ones prepare for shabbat—a practical accommodation for staff sharing similar roots and cultural references.

“We work well together,” said Philippe Zribi, a Tunisian-born Jewish man whose family runs the butcher shop, which employs eight people: three Jews, three Muslims, and two Christians.