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Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the south, was sworn-in on Sunday as his country tries to bounce back from violence unleashed last month by an Islamist sect.

Some shut themselves inside to pray for mercy as they waited for the world's end. Others met for tearful last lunches with their children, and prepared to leave behind homes and pets as they were swept up to heaven. And across the globe, followers of a California preacher's long-publicized message that Judgment Day would arrive Saturday turned to the Bible, the book they believe predicts the beginning of Earth's destruction on May 21.

John Paul II was beatified on Sunday in a celebratory Mass that drew more than a million people to Rome.

Eight hundred Poles boarded a special train Friday night for a 26-hour trip across Europe, bound for Rome and the beatification of the late Pope ...

Talk about hellfire! One of the nation's rock-star-popular young pastors, Rob Bell, 40, has stuck a pitchfork in how Christians talk about damnation. Bell's new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, has provoked weeks of fierce infighting among pastors, theologians and anyone else who scans the Christian blogosphere where critics rage that he's a hipster heretic.

The pope on Friday approved a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II's intercession and set May 1 as the date for his beatification, an event that will be a major morale boost for a church reeling from a wave of violence against Christians and fallout from the clerical sexual abuse scandal.

Four people were killed in Indian Kashmir on Monday when police fired on Muslim protesters who set fire to a Christian missionary school to denounce reports that copies of the Koran had been damaged in the United States, officials said.

Jarretta Hamilton, a 39-year-old teacher from St. Cloud, Fla., was fired from Southland Christian School for becoming pregnant three weeks before she and her husband Sam were married. In a letter to her lawyer, the school said she "was asked not to return because of a moral issue that was disregarded, namely fornication."

Addressing more than 10,000 reverent, enthusiastic priests at the Vatican, Benedict compares celibacy to heterosexual marriage, which he calls the 'foundation of Christian culture.'

Standing before more than 10,000 Roman Catholic priests, Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday strongly reaffirmed the Vatican's commitment to priestly vows of celibacy, cutting off speculation that he might reconsider the issue in light of the church's sexual abuse scandal.

Arsonists in Malaysia struck at a convent school and a fifth church on Sunday amid rising tensions between majority Muslims and Christians over the use of the word "Allah" to describe the Christian God.