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The US Catholic Church used a special and unprecedented ex­emption from federal rules to amass billions of dollars in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.

The church’s haul may have reached—or even exceeded—$3.5 billion, making a global religious institution with more than a billion followers among the biggest winners in the US government’s pandemic relief efforts, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data released in July.

Last month, three major pipeline projects in the US were canceled or temporarily halted in the span of 24 hours—due in large part to grassroots activists and their increasingly creative and sophisticated legal strategies.

Faith leaders are speaking out against the federal government’s decision to begin executing federal prisoners, decrying the Trump administration’s decision to end a nearly two-decade-long moratorium on the federal death penalty.

The outcry came as the US Depart­ment of Justice carried out its second execution in a week on July 16, killing 68-year-old Wesley Purkey by lethal injection after he was convicted in 2003 of raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl as well as killing an 80-year-old woman.

In early July, megachurch pastor John Ortberg claimed his congregation had “extensively investigated” concerns about his son and found “no misconduct.”

Now elders at Menlo Church, a Bay Area congregation of 5,000, say their initial investigation fell short and have announced plans for an additional “supplemental” investigation.

With its modern architectural exterior, Northaven United Methodist Church fits in nicely with its surroundings in the affluent Preston Hollow neighborhood of north Dallas. But since June, each night as the sun sets this building becomes center stage for a #BlackLivesMatter statement.

C.T. Vivian, a minister and advocate for civil rights who worked with Martin Luther King Jr., died July 17 in Atlanta.

Cordy Tindell Vivian was 95. He died of natural causes, business partner and friend Don Rivers told the Associated Press.

Vivian’s social justice work preceded King’s, as the Missouri native non­violently and successfully protested segregated lunch counters in Peoria, Illi­nois, in 1947. He later became part of King’s ex­ecutive staff at the Southern Christian Leader­ship Conference in Atlanta. He served as president of the SCLC into his late eighties.

John Lewis, the longtime civil rights activist, congressman, and ordained Baptist minister who preached about getting in “good trouble,” died July 17 at the age of 80.

On July 10, the president of Turkey formally converted Istanbul's sixth-century Hagia Sophia back into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled a 1934 decision that had made the religious landmark a museum.

The decision sparked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians. Originally a cathedral, Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque after Istanbul's conquest by the Ottoman Empire but had been a museum for the last 86 years, drawing millions of tourists annually.

On June 15, Michael L. Mitchell was elected president of the African Meth­odist Episco­pal Coun­cil of Bishops.

A lifelong AME member, Mitchell became a district bishop in 2016 when he was elected to lead the AME’s 12th district, composed of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Pre­viously, he spent 24 years at St. Stephen AME Church in Jacksonville, Florida, his hometown. At St. Stephen, Mitchell oversaw the expansion of various ministries, including the creation of a child care center that served more than 200 children and a business complex to encourage black entrepreneurship.

The Supreme Court elated religious free exercise advocates and alarmed secular groups with its June 30 ruling on public funding for religious education, a decision whose long-term effect on the separation of church and state remains to be seen.

In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the high court ruled 5–4 that states must give religious schools the same access to public funding that other private schools receive, preserving a Montana scholarship program that had largely benefited students at religious institutions.