LITTLE ROCK — Millions in checks left at holy site
JERUSALEM - Worshippers usually leave notes to the Almighty at one of Judaism’s holiest sites. But half a billion dollars?
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who oversees Jerusalem’s Western Wall, said a worshipper found an envelope at the site Wednesday with 507 checks in the amount of about $1 million each. They were not addressed to anyone, and it’s doubtful they can be cashed.
Rabinovitch said most are Nigerian. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said some were from the United States, Europe and Asia.
Rabinovitch says he has found similar checks in Western Wall charity boxes before, but they all bounced. He says most of them were written by people from Africa.
The rabbi says he thinks the check writers “wanted to give all they had to the Creator of the universe.” - The Associated Press Study: 1 in 6 ‘unaffiliated’
WASHINGTON - A global study of religious adherence released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that about one of every six people worldwide has no religious affiliation.
This makes the “unaffiliated,” as the study calls them, the thirdlargest group worldwide, with 16 percent of the global population - about equal to Catholics.
The study also found a wide disparity in the median age of religious populations, with Muslims and Hindus the youngest, and Buddhists and Jews the oldest. The median age of Muslims was 23, while the median for Jews was 36.
Overall, Christians (including Catholics) are the largest religious group, with 2.2 billion people, about 32 percent of the world’s population. They are followed by Muslims, with 1.6 billion, about 23 percent. There are about 1 billion Hindus, about 15 percent of the global population, and nearly half a billion Buddhists, about 7 percent.
More than three-quarters of the religiously unaffiliated live in Asia, the majority in China.
The study, “The Global Religious Landscape,” is based on analysis of 2,500 different data sources, including censuses and demographic surveys of children and adults in 232 countries.
- The New York TimesVatican accepts donated Nativity
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has happily accepted a donated Nativity scene for St.
Peter’s Square this Christmas after a previous setup costing $730,000 was exposed by the embarrassing scandal over leaked Vatican documents.
Monsignor Giuseppe Sciacca, the No. 2 administrator of the Vatican city state, said the Vatican was spending just $29,000 for labor and costs to mount the scene that will be unveiled Christmas Eve, hours before Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Midnight Mass. The Italian region of Basilicata - one of Italy’s poorest - provided the scene after raising nearly $119,000 from corporate and other sponsors.
One of the most damaging documents leaked during the so-called Vatileaks scandal was a letter from Sciacca’s predecessor complaining that the Vatican was losing millions of euros on corruption and unnecessary expenses such as the 2009 Nativity scene which cost $730,000.
Sciacca said that by accepting a donated scene this year, the Vatican was saving some $239,000 over the 2011 edition - and said he already had an offer for 2013.
- The Associated Press
Religion, Pages 12 on 12/22/2012