Pope Francis changes canon law, officially giving women more access to altar

Pope Francis has formally changed the Code of Canon Law to allow in practice the access of lay women to serve at the altar in the Catholic Church.
American megachurches are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever with more than half of them now having multiracial congregations, a new study from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research has found.
Pope Francis has formally changed the Code of Canon Law to allow in practice the access of lay women to serve at the altar in the Catholic Church.
It's only a small village, but police in India's southern Karnataka state have placed a ban on 5 Christian families from gathering for worship services.
Violence mounted in Washington, DC on the day many Orthodox Christians celebrating Christmas Washington erupted into violence over the U.S. presidential election after a speech by President Donald Trump that said his election defeat was a fraud. Ecumenical and evangelical groups joined in condemning the insurrection.
Despite a national decline in religious observance, slightly over half of Britons continue to see the United Kingdom as a Christian country, but religiousness is low, a new study has found and it is very low in the 16-24 age group.
Belarusian authorities allowed the Catholic archbishop of Minsk to return home for Christmas after lifting a four-month ban on him entering the country during the ongoing protesting against government actions.
After testing negative for COVID-10 this week, Pope Francis gave his traditional Christmas message urging political and business leaders not to allow market forces to overtake the priority of making COVID-19 vaccines available to all.
A 2,000-year-old ritual bath dating to the time of Jesus has been discovered by Israeli archaeologists at Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed just before his crucifixion.
The inn rooms are empty in Bethlehem this year for the traditional Christmas celebrations as the Holy Land city battens hatches against the novel coronavirus pandemic at a time of the year it normally throngs with visitors.