All posts tagged: Faith

A Sikh Spurs fan holds onto faith 

A Sikh Spurs fan holds onto faith 

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Religion has been all over the NBA Finals this year. Nuns have been blessing the Spurs in San Antonio. Knicks fans burned sage outside Madison Square Garden to ward off evil spirits after what has been dubbed “The Trump Game.” Sports journalists reported numerous stories about how Spurs’ phenom, Victor Wembanyama, spent time this past summer training with Buddhist monks at a Shaolin Monastery in China. And after Game 1, a new slogan took New York City and social media by storm: “My mayor’s Muslim/My bagel’s Jewish/My Christian Dior/Knicks in Four!”I’m a Sikh who was born in San Antonio and now lives in New York City. Same with one of my brothers, Raj. We’ve both lived in New York for almost 20 years now. And we’re both massive Spurs fans.  I flew down to Game 1 for the finals to watch my beloved Spurs take on the Knicks. My parents are diehard Spurs fans and longtime season-ticket holders. My mom gifted her ticket to me. It’s the biggest sacrifice anyone’s ever made for …

Pope Leo’s visit lays bare Spain’s tangled politics of faith and migration | Religion

Pope Leo’s visit lays bare Spain’s tangled politics of faith and migration | Religion

Published by Sam Flores

As Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain comes to an end, the party that might have been expected to welcome a papal visit most enthusiastically is instead the most uncomfortable. Vox, the far-right party led by Santiago Abascal, treats Catholicism as a foundational marker of Spanish identity. But Leo’s visit exposed the tension between that claim and the Church’s own teaching on migrants, war and human dignity. The pope’s speech to the Spanish parliament on Monday did not sound like an endorsement of Abascal’s politics, however staunch a Catholic the Vox leader claims to be. Reaching back to the School of Salamanca, the 16th-century movement whose theologians defended the rights and dignity of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas against the logic of conquest, Leo summoned a Catholic tradition that measured power by its treatment of the vulnerable. In a country now convulsed by the politics of immigration, no one could miss what kind of politics that history was meant to indict. Vox embodies exactly the politics Leo was indicting: it has called for mass …

My friend’s disability from long COVID changed her view of faith and friendship

My friend’s disability from long COVID changed her view of faith and friendship

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Life after the COVID-19 pandemic — with everything from higher prices to the rise of technology driving the ways we approach work, fitness and mental health — will never be the same as before. But for some diagnosed with long COVID, a chronic condition continuing months and years after infection, the pandemic didn’t just change the world outside. It uprooted their entire existence.  My friend Anjum, a former avid traveler and elementary teacher, is now on disability leave from work and bedridden most days.  “I honestly thought after having COVID for five days, my life would go back to normal,” she said. “But it never did.” As a Muslim woman who regularly attended her local mosque in Toronto not only for spiritual needs, but also — and primarily — social needs, Anjum says her perspective on faith and friendship has completely pivoted. Her life changed from being quite active socially — volunteering at the mosque’s various charitable programs and attending weekly social outings with large groups of friends she’d made through its youth …

Five faith facts about the 2026 NBA Finals

Five faith facts about the 2026 NBA Finals

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Sport competitions often prompt the most pious fans to see divine favor and religious meaning in the performance of their chosen teams and athletes. This year’s NBA Finals, pitting the New York Knicks against the San Antonio Spurs, are no exception. The Knicks, who had been on a winning streak since April 23 until the Finals’ third game, would end a 53-year championship drought if they claimed the championship title by winning one more of the remaining playoff games. That alone has inspired many to see the team as specially anointed this season. The Spurs, who won the championship in 2014 and are now down 3-1 to the Knicks, have received support from a now viral group of Catholic nuns known as the “Spurs nuns.”  Here are five faith facts about this year’s NBA Finals:  The Catholic university graduating (potential) NBA champions Three Knicks players — Jalen Brunson, the team’s captain; Josh Hart; and Mikal Bridges — graduated from Villanova University, a private Augustinian college in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The trio’s ties …

Pope Leo tells secular Spain not to leave Catholic faith in the ‘museum of the past’

Pope Leo tells secular Spain not to leave Catholic faith in the ‘museum of the past’

Published by Sam Flores

MADRID (RNS) – Over 1.2 million people gathered at Plaza de Cibeles in Madrid on Sunday (June 7) to catch a glimpse of Pope Leo XIV celebrating Mass and leading the Corpus Christi procession, a major celebration where the Eucharist is paraded through the streets. During his homily, Leo urged Catholics to “remember” and “return” to their faith, using the procession as an opportunity to renew Catholic beliefs in a secularized Spain. “The task of Spain,” Leo said, is “to ensure that the religiosity which has shaped and defined this country for centuries is not a museum of the past to be visited, but a school of faith from which to draw even today.” Embracing faith means drawing away from “our selfishness and indifference, of a comfortable, private faith,” he continued. Only this way can Catholics become “builders of a new world,” he said. The event occurred on the second day of the pope’s week-long trip to Spain, the first major European destination of his pontificate. While the majority of Spaniards still identify as Catholic, …

In Spain, Pope Leo faces Europe’s tensions over faith, migration and life issues

In Spain, Pope Leo faces Europe’s tensions over faith, migration and life issues

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — When Pope Leo XIV lands in Spain on Saturday (June 6), he will find a country riven by polarization over migration and life issues, and where declining church attendance coexists with a new, striking interest in faith among young people. In short, the pope will land in a European laboratory for many tensions shaping the West: a promising stage to deliver his message of unity, human dignity and peace. Already in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI described Spain as a central place for the “encounter, not conflict,” between faith and secular modernity. Leo struck a similar note in a Feb. 9 letter to 1,600 Spanish priests, saying Spain faces “advanced processes of secularization” and “a growing polarization in public discourse,” but also a “new restlessness” and spiritual searching among young people. Spain, once the home of Catholic missionaries throughout the centuries, is now itself a mission territory where an increasingly small Catholic minority seeks the encouragement of the pontiff. “I think the pope’s visit will be a splendid moment to encourage this …

Faith leaders keep ministering at Delaney Hall

Faith leaders keep ministering at Delaney Hall

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Moments before Department of Homeland Security agents fired a hail of pepper balls at the feet of demonstrators outside the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, last Monday (May 25), faith leaders say they were frantically working to calm things down. Kathy O’Leary, coordinator of the Catholic group Pax Christi New Jersey, said she was helping to push the crowd back. Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, executive vice president of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said she and a Christian pastor had placed themselves between agents and demonstrators, raising their hands aloft. And the Rev. Robin Tanner, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Summit, New Jersey, said she was conversing with DHS agents as she stood beside U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, who had come to visit Delaney amid reports of a hunger and labor strike staged by detainees alleging inhumane conditions inside.  Then, unexpectedly, DHS agents unleashed the volley of pepper balls. All three faith leaders — along with Kim — were exposed, some left coughing and sputtering as bystanders rushed to help. “We got …

Nottinghamshire County Council urged to stop subsidising faith school transport – Humanists UK

Nottinghamshire County Council urged to stop subsidising faith school transport – Humanists UK

Published by Sam Flores

Humanists UK has called on Nottinghamshire County Council to stop funding its discretionary faith-based home-to-school transport, arguing that the current policy is unfair and an inappropriate use of public funds. Nottinghamshire County Council is currently reviewing its ‘discretionary faith-based home to school transport offer’, arguing that the council is ‘currently facing significant financial pressures across all services’. The council estimates that continuing the current arrangements would cost between £7.25 and £7.5 million over six years, compared with between £2.25 and £2.5 million if discretionary faith-based transport is withdrawn from September 2027. The current scheme supports families who choose faith schools on religious grounds, but offers no equivalent support to families who choose schools with no religious character. In its consultation response, Humanists UK said the scheme is unfair and discriminatory in effect. It strongly argued for the withdrawal of the scheme from 2027, and against delaying withdrawal until 2031 or retaining the scheme with higher parental contributions. Commenting on the proposal, Humanists UK’s Policy and Campaigns Manager Lewis Young said: ‘Nottinghamshire County Council’s current policy …

Stop funding faith school transport, NSS urges council

Stop funding faith school transport, NSS urges council

Published by Sam Flores

The National Secular Society has urged Nottinghamshire County Council to end school transport policies which privilege religious families. The council is currently reviewing its ‘discretionary faith transport offer’, which provides public funding for the transportation of pupils who attend a faith school on grounds of religion. The offer includes public funding for travel for pupils eligible for free school meals where their chosen faith school is beyond walking distance, but also for a “discounted annual travel pass” for pupils attending a school on grounds of religion or belief “where statutory low‑income eligibility does not apply”. Exemptions in equality law allow local authorities to provide ‘free’ transport to a faith school if the local authority considers it to be the nearest suitable school and if the parents’ school preference is based on religion. The discretionary faith transport provision costs the council approximately £1 million per year, and is being reviewed in light of “significant financial pressures across all services”. Nottinghamshire Council’s offer is only available to pupils attending a faith school on grounds of religion – …

Catholic sisters push Palantir on human rights as faith leaders rally in New York

Catholic sisters push Palantir on human rights as faith leaders rally in New York

Published by Sam Flores

NEW YORK (RNS) — Catholic sisters, investors and immigrant rights activists plan to rally on Wednesday (June 3) outside of Palantir Technologies’ New York office, 30 minutes before the company holds it annual general meeting and considers a shareholders’ proposal calling on Palantir to conduct a human rights review of its work.  “We’re investors, but we’re also Catholics,” said Sister Susan Francois, assistant congregation leader and treasurer of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and the lead filer of the shareholder proposal, called Proposal 5. “When we see potential risks to the company that are also causing harm to the human community, we feel that it is of a moral and business imperative to raise the question.” Proposal 5 calls on Palantir to conduct and publish a human rights impact assessment of its work, which includes selling artificial intelligence tools to U.S. and foreign militaries and governments. Last year Palantir won a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to develop surveillance systems for immigration enforcement. Proposal 5 raises concerns about Palantir’s work …