More than 5,000 Orthodox Christians celebrated mass at a monastery in Turkey for the first time in 87 years Sunday, after receiving special permission from Ankara.

Muslim footballers will profit from a new fatwa, allowing them an exception to the strict fasting rules.

A married man was ordained as a Catholic priest in Regensburg this week in a rare exception to the church’s rules of celibacy for men of the cloth, the online newspaper The Local repored citing the diocese.

Jesus may not have have been crucified as there is no evidence to indicate that the Romans crucified prisoners 2,000 years ago.

Right-wing opinion leaders are up in arms as just two of the 200-odd students at a Vienna school are Roman Catholics.

Researchers from Kepler University in the Upper Austrian city of Linz said today Wednesday more than half of the clergy they spoke to backed the idea of putting an end to celibacy.

The German-Islam Conference opened in Berlin's historic building of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, but two of the four major groups that represent the country's Muslims refused to attend.

The people of Oberammergau,  a small village in southern Bavaria, opened the "Passion Play" last weekend. They have been doing this every 10 years since 1633.

Former Protestant leader Margot Käßmann caused a stir at Munich’s interfaith gathering by describing the birth control pill as “God’s gift” – in a Catholic church.

Pilgrims have been retracing the path that Jesus is believed to have walked ahead of his crucifixion, as hundreds of people took part in Good Friday commemorations in Jerusalem.

Austrian Roman Catholics are up in arms over sex scandals involving local priests and children with increasing numbers threatening to quit the church.

The call for Islamic cemeteries in every canton has provoked a wave of reactions. Swiss Islam experts say the proposed legal strategy is the wrong approach to an old problem.

The Vatican has dismissed attempts to link Pope Benedict XVI to child sex abuse revelations in Germany, denying accusations that he had once tried to cover up the actions of pedophile priests.

The head of Germany's Protestant Church resigned from her post as the top-ranking Lutheran bishop on Thursday. Police had caught her driving drunk.

Alois Glück, the new head of Germany’s main Catholic association, on Tuesday called for an end to celibacy vows for priests, according to the tabloid Bild.

Russian Orthodox Church leaders have threatened to cut ties with Germany's Protestants for electing a divorced woman as the head of their church.

Germany's Protestant Church on Wednesday elected Margot Kaessmann as its first female leader. She has said she wants to head a contemporary church that draws more people to the faith.

U.N. human rights experts have raised concerns over the forthcoming anti-minaret vote and controversial poster campaign in Switzerland.

The arch conservative Catholic Pius Brotherhood defied the Vatican again on Saturday by announcing it would ordain three new priests in a chapel near Fulda.

As the number of Muslims in Germany is rising swelling, religious and civic leaders are stepping up pressure on the Berlin government to grant Islam the same legal status as Christianity and other religions. The Islam Conference meets on Thursday to take up the matter.

During a visit to Bethlehem, Pope Benedict XVI voiced support for Palestinian aspirations of an independent homeland and said he hoped the wall that Israel has erected in and around the West Bank would come down.

The Roman Catholic lay group "Wir sind Kirche" (We are the Church) both blasted and appealed to the Church’s hierarchy Saturday in Vienna. The inscription reads: "Benedict, listen to the Church folks," referring to Pope Benedict XVI.

The bishop of Augsburg has linked the crimes committed under Nazi and Communist regimes to atheism, the magazine Der Spiegel reported today. Atheist groups have reacted with fury and accuse the cleric of rewriting history.

A Hamburg bishop said the Church must rethink its stance on condoms, contradicting comment by Pope Benedict XVI blaming them for making the AIDS epidemic in Africa worse.

A 180-foot Jesus statue has sparked the interest of more than a dozen Bavarian communities interested in distinguishing their landscape with the massive redeemer.

Muslims in Berlin are planning to train Islamic clergymen at a soon-to-be-opened school, the first of its kind in the German capital.

The project is the brainchild of Institut Buhara, an organization founded by a group of Muslims linked to the Sufi branch of Islam.

The Austrian Bishops Conference will address the Church crisis at its annual late winter conference from March 9 to 12 in Innsbruck.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced criticism from within her Christian Democratic (CDU) party Thursday over her call for the pope to take a clearer stand on Bishop Richard Williamson's anti-Holocaust views. Photo: Pope Benedikt XVI and Williamson.

Pope Benedict XVI has ordered a conservative bishop Richard Williamson of Britain to unequivocally and publicly renounce his claims that there were no gas chambers and that fewer than 300,000 Jews died in the Nazi death camps instead of the accepted figure of six million.

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston is the first high-level church official in the United States to defend publicly Pope Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication of English Bishop Richard Williamson.