One of the most important Dead Sea scrolls is going on display in Jerusalem this week - more than four decades after it was last seen by the public. The 24-foot scroll with the text of the Bible's Book of Isaiah had been in a dark, temperature-controlled room at the Israel Museum since 1967. It went on display two years earlier, but curators replaced it with a facsimile after noticing new cracks in the calfskin parchment.

Italy's top criminal court overturned the acquittals of a Vatican cardinal and another top churchman accused of environmental pollution involving a Vatican Radio transmission tower near Rome, news reports said Tuesday night.

Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

Pope Benedict XVI should be questioned soon about clergy sex abuse in the Catholic church because he is the most knowledgeable person on the topic and his advanced age makes future testimony unlikely, an attorney said Monday.

The saffron-robed monks who spearheaded a bloody uprising last fall against Myanmar's military rulers are back on the front lines, this time providing food, shelter and spiritual solace to cyclone victims.

Authorities say the leader of an apocalyptic sect in northeastern New Mexico has been released from jail after his son posted his bond.

Conservative legal advocates are recruiting pastors nationwide to defy an IRS ban on preaching about politicians, in a challenge they hope will abolish the restriction.

Author Brian McLaren is among the most influential American religious thinkers of the last decade.

Nearly two-dozen conservative Christian leaders have signed a letter to the Senate Finance Committee questioning an investigation into six large ministries that preach a gospel of prosperity.

Israel staged its 60th birthday bash with fireworks, air force flyovers and a great sense of pride Thursday, but also with uncertainty about its future and doubts about prospects for peace with the Palestinians.

The Dalai Lama's envoys and Chinese officials disagreed more than they agreed at weekend talks on how to move beyond the unrest in Tibet, one of the Tibetan spiritual leader's representatives said Thursday.

Prominent evangelicals urged Christian conservatives Wednesday to support "an expansion of our concerns beyond single-issue politics," angering some leaders on the religious right who have been closely allied with the Republican Party.

The highway leading to this Arab town in central Israel was lined with blue-and-white Israeli flags Wednesday to mark the country's 60th Independence Day. But no banners fluttered in Kufr Qassem itself.

Every month, Phil Davis receives a deposit of American money in his Czech bank account. And every month, he sees that deposit shrink.

The leader of an apocalyptic sect in northeastern New Mexico was arrested Tuesday and charged with felony sex crimes against children.

A Roman Catholic priest was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for having sex with two inmates while a chaplain at a women's prison.

The China Philharmonic Orchestra plans to perform this week for Pope Benedict XVI, state media reported Monday, the latest indication that the often-strained ties between Beijing and the Vatican are improving.

Documents released Monday show how the British government tried to send thousands of Palestine-bound Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide back to postwar Germany without inflaming world opinion.

A Roman Catholic bishop said Sunday that the church has officially recognized that the Virgin Mary appeared to a 17th-century shepherd girl in the French Alps.

Conservative Christian leaders who believe the word "evangelical" has lost its religious meaning plan to release a starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.

More than 200 Methodists attended a lesbian couple's commitment ceremony Friday in defiance of a vote to uphold a church law that says gay relationships are "incompatible with Christian teaching."

As Oral Roberts University prepares to hand out diplomas to its Class of 2008, Anna Siebring, a junior, will be mailing out applications to transfer to another school. Siebring, a government major, is among many students having second thoughts about staying at Oral Roberts after six months of scandal at the evangelical Christian university.

The Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II is applying for Polish citizenship because he wants to live in the country of the late pontiff, whom he called his "spiritual brother."

About two dozen black ministers from the Chicago area say they're behind Barack Obama despite his split from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.