ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) _ Minnesota’s St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity has its largest new enrollment of aspiring Catholic priests since 1981.
The seminary on the University of St. Thomas campus is welcoming
33 new seminarians this fall. That will bring the total number of men studying for the priesthood there to 92, putting its residence [...]

AGOURA HILLS, Calif. (AP) _ Christian author and disability advocate Joni Eareckson Tada says chemotherapy to treat her cancer sometimes leaves her so weak that it’s hard to talk.
Tada, who’s been a quadriplegic since breaking her neck in a
1967 diving accident, was diagnosed with breast cancer in late June and has since undergone surgery and [...]

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s visit to the Mideast peace summit in Washington has triggered protests denouncing the persecution of Christians in Egypt.
Members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority staged a noisy protest outside the White House Thursday, demanding that Mubarak work for justice at home instead of between Israelis and Palestinians.
The protesters cited [...]

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Pentagon says a chaplain killed in Afghanistan this week was the first Army clergyman killed in action since the Vietnam War.
Capt. Dale Goetz was among five soldiers killed by an improvised bomb on Monday. Officials say he had hitched a ride on a resupply convoy.
The 43-year-old Goetz is survived by his [...]

SWAN QUARTER, N.C. (AP) _ Pastors of the only two churches on Ocracoke Island have evacuated as Hurricane Earl threatens the North Carolina coast.
The Rev. Ivey Belch of Ocracoke Assembly of God says he and the island’s Methodist minister were on the same ferry to the mainland, and they joked that other islanders could view [...]

NORTH KOREA (ChristianPost.com) – Samaritan’s Purse has chartered a Boeing 747 cargo jet to airlift 90 tons of relief supplies from the U.S. to North Korea. Massive flooding in August caused more than 260,000 people to flee their homes. Much of the international aid has gone to Pakistan because of their flooding, so Samaritans Purse [...]

KHARTOUM (ChristianPost.Com) – An aid worker with Samaritan’s Purse has been released in Sudan after being held hostage for 105 days. 35-year old Flavia Wagner is exhausted but in good health. She’s now in Khartoum and looking forward to being reunited with her family in the United States. In May, Wagner and a Sudanese driver [...]

MADISON, Wisc. (AP) _ The president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA says leaders of its 860 campus chapters must still be Christians and live according to biblical standards.
Alec Hill says that won’t change, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling against the Christian Legal Society. The justices ruled that a law school in San Francisco [...]

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) _ A U.S. Army chaplain says it was an honor to serve as pastor to his assistant, Staff Sgt. Christopher Stout, who was killed last month in Afghanistan.
Capt. Ludovic Foyou  says the 34-year-old Stout was the first chaplain’s assistant to die in combat in 40 years.
The Army says Stout was killed in [...]

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Efforts to restore a United Methodist center that was destroyed five years ago by Hurricane Katrina are now threatened by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Gulfside Assembly in Waveland, Miss., was founded in 1923 as a boys’ boarding school by the first black elected bishop of [...]