3+ day, 10+ hour ago (251+ words) Flags waved in the chilly November wind and cars honked eagerly in support, not for politics or protest, but for Jesus. About a dozen people from at least three churches marched down Cortez's Main Street Tuesday afternoon, showing their faith and inviting others to join. The gathering served as a reminder of the area's faith-driven community. "We love Jesus, and we are out here to proclaim him from the Gospel," said organizer Carolyn Lucas as the group stopped at Main and Market streets to let others catch up. "There are a few of us who God called to do this and we started telling other people about it, and now they're all coming out," Lucas said. "Our focus is for everyone to get saved and to know who Jesus is as their lord and personal savior," said Jesse Quintana, another…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago (1372+ words) It is not every day that a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks come to visit Durango. After all, Durango is a long way from the Gaden Shartse Buddhist monastery in the Indian state of Karnataka. But on Thursday, dozens of residents crowded into Dreams of Tibet on Main Avenue to witness six monastics create a sand mandala as part of their Compassion Way Durango tour, a 10-day series of meditations, healings and cultural demonstrations meant to share Tibetan traditions and teachings with the community. At the same time, the tour sought to raise money to build a new school for the roughly 1,200 young monks back in India to help preserve their tradition. The six monks came to create a mandala of compassion " a geometric design made of multicolored sand and meant to create a physical manifestation of a Tibetan Buddhist…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago (697+ words) The vote serves as a barometer for the bishops" priorities. In choosing Coakley, they are doubling down on their conservative bent, even as they push for more humane immigration policies from the Trump administration. Coakley was seen as a strong contender for the top post, having already been elected in 2022 to serve as secretary, the No. 3 conference official. In three rounds of voting, he beat out centrist candidate Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, who was subsequently elected vice president. Coakley serves as adviser to the Napa Institute, an association for conservative Catholic powerbrokers. In 2018, he publicly supported an ardent critic of Pope Francis, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan, who was later excommunicated for stances that were deemed divisive. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has often been at odds with the Vatican and the inclusive, modernizing approach of the late…...

4+ week, 1+ day ago (341+ words) On this day, the devotees fast and offer prayers to Lord Vishnu, a key Hindu deity. An initial investigation suggests that an iron grille meant to maintain the queue of worshippers at the temple broke, leading to the uncontrolled crowd surge, Reddy said. Senior local government official Swapnil Dinkar Pundkar said more casualties were feared. "Initially, we had reports of seven deaths, but two more people have succumbed to their injuries while the condition of two others is critical," he said. Of the deceased, eight are women and one is a child, Pundkar said, adding that at least 16 devotees injured in the crowd surge are being treated at a local hospital while 20 others are in a state of shock and put under observation at a different hospital. Video footage on local media showed people rushing to help those who fainted…...

1+ day, 2+ hour ago (922+ words) Leo took his shoes off and, in his white socks, toured the 17th-century mosque, looking up at its soaring tiled domes and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns as an imam pointed them out to him. The Vatican had said Leo would observe a "brief moment of silent prayer" in the mosque, but he didn't. An imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray, since the mosque was "Allah's house," but the pope declined. Later, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said: "The pope experienced his visit to the mosque in silence, in a spirit of contemplation and listening, with deep respect for the place and the faith of those who gather there in prayer." The Vatican then sent out a corrected version of its bulletin about the trip, removing reference to the planned "brief moment of…...

1+ week, 1+ hour ago (942+ words) GARDEN GROVE, Calif. " An interactive museum dedicated to the Shroud of Turin, which some say was Jesus" burial cloth, opened its doors to the public Wednesday at the Christ Cathedral campus in Southern California. "The Shroud of Turin: An Immersive Experience," a $5-million exhibit in Garden Grove featuring 360-degree projection room theaters, Shroud of Turin replicas, interactive kiosks and a life-size sculpture of Christ, was conceived over a span of three years and funded through private donations. The content was created primarily by Othonia, Inc., a Rome-based group dedicated to the examination of the shroud, one of the most studied artifacts in history. The original " a 14-foot-long, 3.5-foot-wide " is kept in a bulletproof, climate-controlled case housed in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. The California museum " covering 10,000 square feet " contains a life-size laminated visual of the…...