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"We have the duty to cooperate with civil authorities in a common fight against crime," Scicluna said.

Monsignor Charles Scicluna told a closed-door, church sponsored symposium in Vatican City that bishops can and should be removed from office if they fail to follow church guidelines.

"So there is already provision in canon law, it is a crime in canon law to show malicious or fraudulent negligence in the exercise of one's duty," Scicluna said.

Many victims' groups have long been critical of the Catholic Church and its bishops for shielding priests accused of sexually abusing children and have dismissed the symposium as a public relations ploy.

But Marie Collins, the only abuse victim taking part in the symposium, says she is pleased by what she heard.

"The bottom line for me is that children have to be protected. We can't do anything about those like myself, who were abused in the past, but by putting in proper protection for the future, we can save children in the future from being abused," Collins said.

Pope Benedict has expressed shame and sorrow over THE abuse and has called on bishops to come up with guidelines against pedophiles by May of this year.

Earlier this week, the church said it has received more than 4,000 child sex abuse allegations over the past decade.

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Until recently, Chesnay was mostly known because of its proximity to Versailles, the dazzling 18th-century palace that was home to French "Sun King" Louis XIV.  But today, this small town west of Paris is making news because of another monument, a 7,000-square-meter Mormon temple, expected to be built here in the next few years.

From his office window, Chesnay Mayor Philippe Brillault points to an abandoned, asbestos-filled energy plant.  This is the property the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has acquired for its temple.  Further away, the spire of the Versailles palace church sparkles in the sun.

Brillault admits he was not thrilled to receive the church's request to acquire the property.  He says the Mormons have a negative image in predominately Catholic France, even if they may not deserve it.  Brillault says he granted the building permit after an investigation he commissioned found no reason to refuse it.

With 36,000 members, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France is among the oldest and largest of Mormon churches in Europe.  Missionaries arrived from the United States in the 1850s.

But only recently have ordinary French become aware of the Mormon faith, partly through media reports about U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who spent time in France as a young Mormon missionary.  And partly because of the controversy surrounding the Chesnay temple.

Political analyst Michelle Bacharan says that unlike the United States, French history has shaped a public deeply wary of any religion invading public space.

"Mormon temples tend to be really big, you can not miss them.  You can have some architectural disagreements with that and some people in a particular town may not like it.  And only real Mormons can attend ceremonies in temples, so that can create suspicion of what is going on there," Bacharan said.

Today, France's Mormon community gathers in ordinary churches, like one in the neighboring town of Versailles.  But church spokesman Christian Euvrard says there are special services that can only take place in temples.

"A temple is a place for communion.  It is a place for spiritual retreat.  It is a place where families will come once or twice a year," Euvrard said.

For now, Mormons like 40-year-old American Darla Pape, who attends the Versailles church with her family, must travel to Britain or Germany to go to temple.

"For us, going to the temple is a wonderful experience ... so I think that for church members in France to have a temple close that they could go to more regularly, they will see many blessings in their lives from that regular attendance," Pape said.

But opposition to the temple project is growing.  An Internet petition circulated by a Chesnay group has gathered 6,000 signatures, although Mayor Brillault says most are not local residents.  The mayor's opponents criticize the project, mostly it appears, for political reasons.

Others, like Marie Drilhon, local chapter head of UNADFI, a group fighting religious extremism, view the Mormon faith with skepticism.

Drilhon says the Mormon church demands a lot from its members, both financially and spiritually.  It uses marketing methods to proselytize, which Europeans are not used to.  And she doubts the temple will benefit the local community.

But Michelle, another local resident, has no objections to a Mormon temple in Chesnay.

Michelle says she has visited Salt Lake City in Utah, the headquarters of the Latter-day Saints, and she knows about the religion.

Church spokesman Euvrard says the Chesnay temple will allow other French to discover his faith.

"For us, it is a great opportunity to explain who we are, to introduce ourselves and to say 'yes,' we have been here for a long time, we are here and we are very present in society," Euvrard said.  

Euvrard says the temple project includes gardens that will be open to the public.  With time and greater awareness, he believes, French fears about the Mormons will disappear.

The singer Madonna - who is known for her explorations of spirituality - will perform at halftime at the Super Bowl.  She called it "the holy of holies in America."

"Football is symbolically, theatrically, dramatically really powerful," Oriard said. "One of the things that's different between the football we play compared to the football that the rest of the world plays - that we call soccer - is, by giving the ball to one side or the other, and allowing it to keep that ball, so long as it can advance it and all that sort of business, we've built a more dramatic structure into it.  So there's an ebb and flow in an American game that's quite different from the more rapid up and back of, say, soccer."

So while religion finds its way into professional sports around the globe - as many soccer players cross themselves during a game - Oriard says American football has also become a stage where conflicts over cultural values are played out.

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"I believe in the power of prayer because I felt it in my own life," former President George W. Bush told the prayer breakfast in 2008. "Prayer has strengthened me in times of personal challenge."

Two years later, President Barack Obama told thousands of guests that prayer can accomplish much.

"It can touch our hearts with humility. It can fill us with a spirit of brotherhood.  It can remind us that each of us are children of an awesome and loving God," he said.

The National Prayer Breakfast was started in the 1950s. It's often held in the ballroom of a fancy hotel, and has drawn well-known guests such as Mother Teresa, former British prime minister Tony Blair and the musician Bono.

But it continues to come under criticism from some secular and religious groups in the United States.

Some object to the sponsoring Christian foundation known as The Fellowship, which keeps its membership list secret and is said to be influential in Congress. Others say the Breakfast is an exercise in hypocrisy.

The Reverend Grayland Hagler attended the White House breakfast in 1993 and says he was unmoved.

"For me, it was a theologically cold event," he says. "And when I say theologically cold event, it was the perfunctory engagement of prayer and not the substantial engagement of prayer that I would hope to see."

Hagler is a minister at the Plymouth Congregational Universal Church of Christ in Washington. He belongs to a group of interfaith clergy associated with the "Occupy" movement, which is protesting the growth of income inequality in America. The "Occupy Faith" clergy are organizing an alternative "People's Prayer Breakfast" to be held at the same time as the National Prayer Breakfast.

"A prayer breakfast that probably doesn't have the ability to critique what's going on in our country misses a whole wide swath of what prayer is also about," says the Rev. Karen Brau of the Luther Place Memorial Church. She adds that a crucial element of faith is challenging the powers that be.

"What happens often when religion goes into the public square is that it doesn't necessarily come with its full depth."

But Americans want to know that their president is a person who prays, says Mark Rozell, a public policy lecturer at George Mason University and editor of the book, "Religion and the American Presidency."

"The National Prayer Breakfast is a reflection of the overall culture in the United States, where the religious commitment and participation is going up rather than going down, and people expect to have a president of strong religious faith, and they are comfortable with president engaging in public displays of religious faith and commitment," he says.

With America's religious landscape becoming increasingly diverse, Rozell says the National Prayer Breakfast is a way for the president to express his faith publicly - without favoring one religion over another.

"Pray [to] God for forgiveness in our hearts, especially on those who have inflicted injury, pain into our lives," he said.

Outside the church, Father Acha praises the Muslims of Madalla for their outpouring of sympathy and support during the church's time of grief.  He says Muslims and Christians here have always considered themselves one community.

"That relationship between Christians and Muslims, especially in the middle belt of Nigeria, you see in a family of five - three are Muslims, two are Christians.  In a family of six, four are Christians, two Muslims.  And this is how it has been, and we eat and drink together," he explained.

Father Acha blames successive governments for ignoring the growth of Islamic radicalism in Nigeria during the past 10 years.

"Boko Haram came shortly after the political regime of some governments, feeling Nigeria should be an Islamic state introducing Sharia law in their states. Gradually, before we know it, there was this group trained, and security men were equally aware of them.  And nobody took them serious," Acha recalled. "They came as a political organ and now it has turned to become a religious problem."

Thirty kilometers away, at Abuja's main mosque, the message is one of  tolerance.  Islamic cleric Huseyn Zakaria Mohamed agrees with his Catholic counterpart that the rise of sectarian tensions has been tolerated, and in some cases encouraged, by those in power.

"Left to the Muslims or the Christians without interferences - without actually people sponsoring them to fight and kill each other and maim each and destroy their properties - they are brothers and sisters and keepers to one another," Mohamed said.

He says most Nigerian Muslims reject Boko Haram's brand of radical Islam.

“We don't preach 'fight the Christians' in the mosque. We don't do that. A Christian has rights in an Islamic state. In Nigeria," Mohamed stated. "Christians must have their right to worship.”

At St. Theresa's, parishioners stand on the church steps after Sunday mass surveying the wreckage left by the Christmas Day blast.  They say they wonder what the suicide bomber was thinking.  If his goal was to strike a blow against Christianity, they say he failed.  The damage to the church was only superficial, and of the 44 people killed, 26 were church members.  The other 18 were passersby and neighbors - some of them Muslims.  

It is story time at the Cook home.  Two-year-old Tristan gets his work-weary father Dave Cook to read him one book after another before going to bed.

As Dave and his wife Andrea sit on the sofa with their two small children on their laps, the Cooks have the look of the all-American family.  But they belong to one of the least understood faiths in America, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon church is officially known.

"Some people know a lot about our church.  Some people don't know anything about our church,” Dave Cook says.  “There's a lot of misperceptions about Mormons."

Mormons make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, around 6 million people.  Another 8 million Mormons live abroad.  But in the United States, some of the misperceptions Dave Cook speaks of are being challenged.

With presidential hopeful and Mormon Mitt Romney gaining momentum in the bid for the Republican Party nomination, many LDS members are excited by the prospect of a president from their faith.  They are also conscious of the attention their faith is getting from media coverage about the award-winning Broadway show, The Book of Mormon.

A new survey by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that Mormons on the whole are satisfied with their lives.  "This is a group that in many ways is thriving,” says researcher Greg Smith.  “And this is a group that in many ways perceives a growing level of acceptance of themselves, of their faith on the part of other Americans."  

But he adds that they are aware of the misgivings many Americans have about their faith.  "Lots of Mormons tell us that Mormons are discriminated against in the United States.  And two thirds of Mormons say they are not accepted, they are not seen as part of mainstream American society," Smith said.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in America in the 19th century.  But Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was murdered in 1844 and his followers were persecuted.

Last year, Texas pastor Robert Jeffress made headlines when he suggested that Mitt Romney is not a Christian and that Mormonism is a cult.  The latter comment reflects a view held by about one-third of Americans, mainly evangelical Protestants, according to the Pew Forum.

"To me, it's just mind-boggling why people would be that disrespectful of anyone," says Dave Cook, adding that a Mormon president would be good for America.

"We're very patriotic.  In fact, we even believe that the Founding Fathers [of the United States] were inspired of God to found this country."  

The Pew survey found that three-quarters of Mormon who are registered to vote lean toward the Republican Party and hold conservative social views.  Nearly twice as many Mormons as other Americans prefer a family in which the husband is the wage earner and the wife takes care of the home and children.

At 11am on Saturday, the metropolitan Bishop of Freetown Reverend Tamba Charles gathered a small group of Catholics at Sacred Heart Cathedral in the capital Freetown and read out a statement e-mailed to him by the papal representative to Sierra Leone Reverend George Antonysamy.

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In it, he said, “Today as Apostolic nuncio in Sierra Leone, I have the honor and duty to communicate to all of you that His Holiness Pope Benedict the XVI has appointed Reverend Father Henry Aruna, a priest from the diocese of Kenema and the Secretary General of the Inter-Territorial Catholic Bishops Conference of the Gambia and Sierra Leone, as the Bishop of Makeni.”

At the time of the announcement, church members in Makeni went to the main cathedral with the intent of delaying the naming of the new bishop:  they barricaded the doors of the compound, said the rosary and sang songs of praise.  But they soon learned the new bishop had been named, instead, in the capital Freetown.

Secretary General Gerald Alex Sesay of the Laity, or church members of the diocese, said defiantly over the phone from Makeni, that they were not going to recognize the new bishop who had been attached to the Kenema diocese in eastern Sierra Leone.

The reason, he says, is that they consider it an insult for the church hierarchy to bring in an outsider to lead them. He says over the years, a good number of priests have been ordained in Makeni and now have the qualifications and experience to hold the position.

Gerald Sesay says tribal affiliation is not important to the laity.  What matters, he says, is that the bishop is local.

Journalists in Makeni say protesting youths in the church compound were addressed by senior priest Monsignor John Tarawalli. He reportedly told the youths not to take part in violent acts. He said they will open the church and conduct normal services on Sunday but they will not accept the new bishop.

Meanwhile in Freetown the metropolitan Bishop Reverend Father Charles said, “The appointment of a Bishop is purely a Church matter. It is not done on a political basis, [nor] in recognition of tribal boundaries or geo-political divisions. It is done according to the criteria established by the Church, and that is what has been followed in this particular case.”

On Sunday, the cathedral was opened and mass was held though the priests and laity were still adamant they will not recognize the new bishop.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP.

Some Christians in southern and eastern Europe marked the feast of Epiphany Friday, a religious holiday celebrating the revelation of God as man.  Young men in Bulgaria dived in cold waters in a contest to retrieve a cross.  According to belief, the person who captures it will be freed of evil spirits or other troubles.

In Romania, tradition calls for the blessing of domestic animals as well as people at Christmas.

In some countries, including Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, the Orthodox Christmas Eve tradition requires cutting branches from oak trees, to be burned later in huge fires in front of churches and at home.

The fires are believed to warm the community with love and harmony.

Serbian President Boris Tadic sought to contribute to the spirit of Christmas by sending a message of peace to Albanians as well as Serbs in neighboring Kosovo.  But on his way to a religious service Friday in Visoki Decani, an ancient Serbian monastery in Kosovo, angry Albanian protesters hurled stones at his armored motorcade.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.

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A wintry evening in central Jerusalem. Activists are preparing a protest against segregated buses that run through the city's ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.

The women sit in the front instead of the back as they are supposed to here. Some followers of ultra-Orthodox Judaism believe men and women should be separated in public, although it is illegal under Israeli law.  Women who challenge segregation have been insulted and spat upon.

Anat Hoffman is an activist in the religious reform movement. She says ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to live insulated lives in closed communities, but this is changing.

"There are some fringe extremist groups that are threatened by, first and foremost, Orthodox women changing in modern times, being educated, being savvy in the world. And they want to keep them in their place," said Hoffman.

In certain neighborhoods, advertisements showing women have been vandalized.  Women are encouraged to walk on the other side of the street from men, and recently, an 11-year-old schoolgirl complained on television of being harassed.  Critics say some rabbis condone these activities.

Rabbi and parliament member Israel Eichler disagrees.  He says discrimination against the ultra-Orthodox, not religion, is the root cause.

"Even the extremist rabbis don't give a license to violence because violence is antithesis [to] Judaism, [to] the Torah, from [to] Gods' will," said Eichler.

Tamar El Or, an anthropologist at Hebrew University, says the ultra-Orthodox community is growing and becoming more diverse.  Many who spent their lives studying religion or raising families are being forced to look for jobs.  At the same time, Israel's non-religious society is growing more secular.

"These are two developments, two social powers that are going against each other," said El Or.  "They are bound to clash over and over again. Now this is typical to Israel, but every society has trends and tensions, and this is the role of the state to control it.

El Or says the laws against segregation and discrimination must be enforced. But Israeli society must also make space for the demands of ultra-Orthodox people. And she says those tensions will continue until reluctant political and religious leaders address the issue.

American college students are exposed to new ideas that can challenge their religious beliefs, but campus clergy say many remain religiously committed.  

A traditional festival lets Indian students share their faith and culture with others.  Many are doing that today, says Chandni Raja of the Hindu Student Organization at the University of Southern California. “Meeting other groups on campus and trying to get that dialogue going, while also maintaining our own communities as a strong place where people can come together,” she said.

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USC's dean of religious life, Varun Soni, says many students embrace religion on their own terms. “They're more interested, I find, in making religion work for them as opposed to working for it," Soni stated. "So they interpret their religious and spiritual traditions in a way that makes sense for them.”

And at Stanford University, the school’s dean for religious life, Scotty McLennan, is also seeing a new openness. “I think the most exciting thing that’s happening is that students really are learning how to listen to each other across traditions, and they really are getting more interested in that kind of empathetic listening," he said. "And presence to each other, hearing each others' stories.”

Some students maintain their traditional practices, and others become less observant, but many want to share their faith and traditional culture with others.

Omer Bajwa, coordinator of Muslim life at Yale University, counsels Muslim students, and he says have many questions about the role of faith. “In a time of increasing religiosity but also increasing secularism, where are the fault lines, what are the tensions and what are the areas of conversation?  I think we find common questions coming across,” he said.

Probing discussions in the classroom and with students of different backgrounds can challenge a student’s faith, says Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, senior associate dean for religious life at Stanford University. “The question in my mind is whether that questioning leads to a falling off of commitment or a deepening of commitment," she pondered. "And my experience is that people who claim their religious traditions after having or in the process of being engaged with other people are far more inclined to see what they have as something precious.”

Interfaith service projects and community dialogues are bringing students together at schools all across the country, says Tahera Ahmad, the associate university chaplain at Northwestern University. “What I’ve seen on college campuses is that the young students who are from various faith backgrounds are coming together and not necessarily leaving their faith at the door, but not also wearing their faith on their sleeve, but finding some kind of balance as to say, ‘This is who I am.  I am a Muslim, I am a Christian, I am a Jew.  We’re all coming together towards making the world a better place,’” she said.

These college chaplains says that students are maturing in their faith by meeting and learning from those of other faiths. 

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

John Howerton, from the U.S. state of Texas, said “It’s awesome. It’s like a dream. It’s so wonderful to be here and you have to keep sort of pinching yourself and say, ‘This is really, this is the place, this is where the Lord came and appeared among men.’”

It was the biggest turnout in more than a decade thanks to a long lull in West Bank violence, and that is good news for Palestinian shopkeepers in Manger Square, like Wissam Issid.

“Now is very good. Each time we have a stable political situation, we have a good tourist season," he said.

But Issid says Christmas week is not enough to make a living, and tourism has been harmed this year by the revolutions of the “Arab Spring.” He said many tourists don’t differentiate between one part of the Middle East and another.

“Some people, they don’t know where is Egypt or where is the Holy Land; so they are afraid - all the tourists - because they are a little bit afraid to come to troubled places," he said.

With all the turmoil in Arab nations, the usually volatile West Bank has been a surprising bastion of stability. And it was a peaceful Christmas in the little town where Christians believe Jesus was born more than 2,000 years ago.

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Outside the home of Saman Namazikhah and his wife Fatemeh, there sits a snowman adorned with lights and strings of lights wrapped around a tree. Inside, a Christmas tree sits beside a fireplace with Christmas stockings hung above a roaring fire.  The Namazikhahs might have one of the most beautifully decorated homes on their street, but they are not Christians.  They are Muslims, who came from Iran.

"We consider ourselves American as well as Iranians and Muslims, too.  We don't differentiate it.  As far as it goes so we enjoy it; we celebrate it.  We decorate the house," said Fatemeh Mokhtari Namazikhah.

Saman Namazikhah says they combine an American tradition with Iranian traditions, especially during the meal for Christmas day.

"It wouldn't necessarily be a traditional Christmas feast.  It could be a traditional Iranian feast," Saman Namazikhah explained.

As a board member of the Iran American Muslim Association of North America, Namazikhah says many of his friends at the culture center also take part Christmas traditions.

"A lot of them celebrate it.  It's a part of their lives.  They grew up here.  A lot of them are people that have been here for a long time, so going through the school system, it's something that was pretty much embedded in their lives in their childhood," added Namazikhah.

Pakistani American Tehmina Khan started decorating her home for her children for Christmas 25 years ago.

"It's festive.  We'd like to be a part of the American celebration.  And its sharing and giving and just a joyous occasion, and we want to be a part of it," Khan explained.

Khan exchanges gifts and holds holiday parties, inviting many Muslim friends, such as Sara Khan and her family, who also decorate their homes for Christmas.  But Khan says some of her other friends do not approve.

"They basically think that's nothing that Muslims do.  It's not in our religion.  They don't celebrate the birth of Christ.  But we do believe in the Jesus, so there's nothing wrong with celebrating it," Sara Khan noted.

Usman Madha is the spokesman for the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles.  He says Muslims should not attach religious significance to their Christmas celebrations.

"They are on a very thin line there," Madha explained.  "We also believe in Moses.  When I say 'believe' in meaning that we believe them to be major prophets of Islam.  How many Muslims go out and celebrate Pesach, Passover?"

Madha says it is important for Muslims to remember their faith.

"Participate, enjoy.  Yet at the same time, the differences are there.  It's just this is Christianity, this is Islam; we are Muslims, you are Christians," Madha added.

Just how many Muslims participate in Christmas traditions depends on demographics.  From Madha's perspective this is a practice of "very, very few individuals."  But the answer is very different for Pakistani American Vallikhan Khan, 22, who was born and raised in the United States.

"I think everyone that I know that's Muslim celebrates Christmas.  Their faith is really strong, but they want to associate with the culture and be like everybody else," said Vallikhan Khan.

Many Muslim Americans who have Christmas trees say they do not see Christmas as a religious holiday.  For them, it is simply a time of sharing and giving with family and friends of all faiths.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

A new controversy over Islam has arisen in the United States, this time over a reality TV show that profiles Muslim Americans and a home improvement chain's decision to pull its advertising from the show. The company, Lowe's, decided to end its ties to the program after a conservative Christian group labeled the show "propaganda" that hides the "danger" of the Islamic agenda.

It's a scene from All-American Muslim...

"I have no concerns about traveling around the anniversary of 9/11," says one young Muslim American woman on the show.

...focused on discrimination.

"It's annoying to walk through an airport and know people are looking at you," she goes on to say.

Muslim-American leaders say the Lowe's home improvement chain's decision to pull ads from the show is more of the same.

"I'm really disappointed, because it promotes hate. It's so un-American. It is bigotry at its core," said Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan state representative.

"I think that it's frankly pitiful that Lowe's corporation, a corporation that touts itself on being inclusive and promoting diversity, would capitulate to bigots," said Dawud Walid of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

All-American Muslim follows five families in Dearborn, Michigan - home to one of the nation's largest Arab-American communities. The channel that airs it, TLC, says it offers an "intimate look" at misconceptions and conflicts the families face.

Lowe's said in a statement it withdrew its advertising after the program became what it called a "lightning rod" for strong political views.

That followed a campaign by the Florida Family Association. The group calls All-American Muslim "propaganda," designed to counter concerns about Muslims by only profiling those who appear to be ordinary people.

VOA's calls to the association were not returned.

Daniel Cox is director of research at the Public Religion Research Institute in Washington. He said the controversy over the show speaks to the public opinion challenges Muslim Americans face.

"American attitudes toward Muslims are changing, but overall there is still a significant level of discomfort. You see this evident in our research and other research," said Cox. "We find that Americans are really divided overall whether they'd be comfortable with a mosque being built in their neighborhood, a Muslim teaching elementary school or a Muslim woman wearing the burqa. And you see an even greater discomfort among certain religious groups like white evangelicals."

Now facing threats of a boycott, Lowe's is not the only company distancing itself from the series. Travel website Kayak.com says it also is stopping its ads, but not because of the Florida Family Association.

One of its reasons: It doesn't think the show is any good.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.