Does ET need Jesus? Vatican astronomer says, ‘no.' Intelligent life may exist on other planets and has no need of redemption through Jesus Christ, the director of the Vatican Observatory said. “Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on the Earth, so there could be other creatures, even intelligent ones, created by God,” Jose Gabriel Funes was quoted in the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. According to Funes, such creatures may never have fallen into sin, and so they have no need of salvation through Christ. “It is not a given that they have need of redemption,” he said. “They may have remained in full friendship with their Creator.”
Casting Crowns singer reaps Dove Awards. Casting Crowns lead singer Mark Hall and his group reaped a total of seven Dove Awards at the annual Gospel Music Association ceremony. Among his four individual awards, Hall was honored for co-writing the Song of the Year, “East to West.” Casting Crowns was honored three times, including as Group of the Year. TobyMac was named Artist of the Year, a title he claimed in 1996 as a member of dcTalk. His latest solo album, Portable Sounds, debuted at No. 10 on Billboard's Top 200 albums chart. He was honored in two other categories for his work on that album.
Hotel offers variety of spiritual texts. Overnight guests at one Nashville, Tenn., hotel who crave religious reading material may turn to something other than a Gideon Bible. The Hotel Preston recently started offering a “spiritual menu” to its guests, including the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita and additional versions of the Bible other than the Gideon-provided King James Version. Five hotels in the Portland, Ore.-based Provenance chain have introduced the new offerings in the last few months, with the Nashville property starting them most recently. Researchers for the American Hotel & Lodging Association noted in 1998, 79 percent of hotels surveyed said they provided religious reading material in guest rooms; that figure jumped to 95 percent in 2006.
U.S. visit boosts Pope's approval ratings. After Pope Benedict XVI's first papal visit to the United States, six of 10 Americans now report favorable views of the pontiff, a modest bump from pre-trip opinions, according to new polls. Before his April 15-20 visit to Washington, D.C., and New York, the German-born pope was largely unknown in the United States three years after his election. In March, more than 80 percent of Americans said they heard little or nothing about him, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. After Benedict met with President Bush, celebrated public Masses before huge crowds and repeatedly spoke of the pain and shame caused by his church's sexual abuse scandal, 61 percent of Americans say they hold a favorable or very favorable view of the pope, up from 52 percent before the trip. More than half of Americans now say the pope does an excellent or good job of promoting relations with other faiths, up from 39 percent in March.
Compiled from Religion News Service