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There's still time to catch the opening episode of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s new comedy series Rev., which debuted on Monday evening. Watch it here. Tom Hollander is the said Rev., a Church of England vicar in London. Some say it's the Vicar of Dibley meets The Thick of It. Tell me what you think.

Pope Benedict with his brother bishops in Belgium after the country's police raided , including the home of . Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, expressed complete astonishment at the raids. "There are no precedents, not even under the old communist regimes," he said. But police spokesmen say the raids are normal practice in an investigation of child sexual abuse "by a certain number of Church figures".

In April, the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned and admitted to sexual abuse before and after becoming a bishop. Some believe these police raids are in connection with that investigation. Others suspect that other church figures are likely to be implicated in a widening investigation.

Pope Benedict restricts his criticism of the raids to the manner of their execution. In , he writes: "I want to express, dear brother in the Episcopate, as well as to all the Bishops of Belgium, my closeness and solidarity in this moment of sadness, in which, with certain surprising and deplorable methods, searches were carried out. I hope that justice will follow its course while guaranteeing the rights of individuals and institutions, respecting the rights of victims, (and) acknowledging those who undertake to collaborate with it."

Update: that the Belgian police raided the church premises in response to a tip-off from the former president of an internal church commission who suggested that information was being hidden by the church.

Today's Sunday Telegraph that we've all been discussing for weeks, that former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe is to succeed Francis Campbell as the UK's Ambassador to the Holy See. When I interviewed Ann Widdecombe a few weeks ago, I asked her about the rumour and she simply replied, "rumours are rumours". She refused to confirm or deny that she had been asked by the government to consider the appointment. When I also asked her if she had the diplomatic skills necessary to be an ambassador to the Vatican, she replied, "Yes!"

Diplomats, of course, have to practice the discipline of self-consorship. They are not the kind of people who rush from TV studio to TV studio offering their views on the contentious issues of the day. They are not newspaper columnists. Ann Widdecombe, on the other hand, has rarely been shy about expressing her own views on controversial issues or going "off-message" when her personal views are out of sync with the party line. If she takes up this diplomatic post, will she be prepared to limit her loquaciousness?

Here's a case in point. In an interview on tomorrow's Radio 4 Analysis programme, Ann Widdecombe (as reported in The Sunday Telegraph), expresses her deep concerns about a growing intolerance to Christianity in Britain today. In doing so, she refers to the introduction of new equality laws under the last government, which led to the closure of Catholic adoption agencies, and says: "In a truly free society nobody should be forced by law to promote something to which they have a serious conscientious objection."

Clearly she is commenting on a previous government's legislative actions, but is there any sign that the current government plans to overturn those equality laws? David Cameron has been absolutely clear on the question of Christian B&B owners that, notwithstanding their serious conscientous objections, they will be required to abide by new equality laws and accommodate gay and lesbian couples. Is the Prime Minister, then -- in Ann Widdecombe's language -- "forcing" those Christians to go against their own conscience?

If Ann Widdecombe is appointed ambassador to the Vatican, will she find herself, at times, personally torn between offering this kind of comment on contentious public questions and keeping her diplomatic powder dry?

Update: about Ann Widdecombe's diplomatic skills has now begun in earnest.

It's one of the most disputed chapters in the history of science, and critics of religion say it's an historical smoking gun which indicts the church as an organisation that assualts those who dare to think new ideas. Galileo proposed an idea that we now take for granted: that the earth rotates around the sun.

This idea (sometimes called "heliocentricity") had already been suggested as a hypothesis by Copernicus, and it was a perception that even the ancient Greeks considered. What Galileo brought that was innovative to this old idea was new observational technology, with the development of the telescope. Heliocentricity was not just an operating hypothesis for Galileo; it was a factual claim, evidenced by observation, that overturned the conventional wisdom of "geocentricity" (the idea that the sun rotates around the earth). But the church authorities of his day, Galileo's claim, and (perhaps more to the point) the way that he advertised his claim, was beyond the pale. The great scientist, often described as the father of modern science, was charged with heresy, tried in a church court, and eventually silenced and detained under house arrest.

On today's Sunday Sequence, Fr Ernan McMullin, a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Notre Dame, argued that the Galileo Affair is widely misunderstood. This was not a clash between science and religion. Everyone involved in the case was a Christian. Galileo wrote many thousands of words on the theology of biblical interpretation as he sought to make sense of the telescopic observations he was making.

You can read a summary of Ernan McMullin's argument , in a paper published by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

Fr McMullin's paper is part of a Faraday Institute series exploring some of the key questions emerging in the debate about science and religion. These include: "Creation and Evolution, not Creation or Evolution", "Interpreting Genesis in the 21st Century", "Ethical Issues in Genetic Modification", and "The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate". Read them all .

The philanthrophy of who died in July 2008, is legendary. It is also . The American-born British billionaire made his fortune from mutual funds and decided to donate the vast bulk of it to causes he cared about. There is a Templeton College at Oxford University, Sir John's alma mater (now known as , Oxford). You will find a at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, where Sir John, a committed Presbyterian, served as a member of the Board of Trustees for 42 years. Visit Tennessee, the state where John Templeton was born, and you will find the Templeton Library of Sewanne. And read the footnotes in every other research paper or book on science and religion these days, and you'll probably find an acknowledgement of a grant from the Templeton Foundation, which distributes about £40m annually to universities, colleges, research institutes, and individual researchers to encourage exploration of the relationship between science and spirituality.

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He's back. As many of us predicted when he fell from grace, the American evangelical leader who resigned from his church in Colorado four years ago after a sex scandal, has returned to the evangelical fold and launched a new church. was held at the home of Ted and Gayle Haggard earlier this month.

Pastor Haggard told the assembled that the new church would begin by hosting a "Resurrection Party" to mark his return to Christian leadership. Since the news story broke in 2006 revealing that the pastor had been secretly meeting a gay escort for some time while campaigning against gay equality laws, Ted Haggard's website has been updating his supporters with his account of his process of ". He continues to maintain that he is "completely heterosexual".

: "I may not be qualified to be a pastor, but I know I am qualified to serve others in need. I have learned a great deal over the last three and a half years and have deep desire to help others in need. I do know much more that I did prior to my crisis in November of 2006. I know more about compassion, understanding, kindness, love, and peace. I want to help people. I know that when we suffer, a loving hand, a kind voice, a gentle touch, and practical assistance can make all the difference in the world. Depression, loneliness, personal failure, embarrassment, and disillusionment can be powerful forces in a person's mind in difficult times."

Ted Haggard is to have been embroiled in a scandal of this kind . There have been . Sceptics may regard their return to ministry as proof of the gullibility of their followers; but the church members who accept the leadership of someone like Ted Haggard will tell you it is a measure of their grace, and God's grace. Conversion stories are at the heart of evangelical Christianity, and this can produce a dilemma for evangelical churches when one of their leaders "falls". If that leader confesses to his or her sin in language that evangelicals recognise as a statement of repentance, and the leader then places him or herself in accountable relationships with church authorities and begins "a journey home", then the moral and spiritual burden on church members is to accept this person as a prodigal returning to the fold. Whether they should be re-authorised to lead in the church is another matter, of course, but it would be a strange evangelical church indeed that did not make space for a new convert.

Ted Haggard's story is a little more complex because -- unlike, say, a case of heterosexual adultery, or financial corruption -- many of his critics still believe he is in denial about his sexual identity. None of these critics, of course, have counselled Ted Haggard before coming to that judgement. In fact, who could ever describe another person's sexual identity from a distance with any authority?

(Read an about whether the biblical word "abomination" is a translation mistake that needs some attention.)

Next Sunday, we'll be broadcasting from , who are holding a special weekend in Dublin to explore some of the big questions about the future of religion in an age of science. Some of the world's leading scholars of science and religion will be there. And we'll be talking about ? Is the ? Are natural disasters ""? Is medical science starting to ? And finding out what really happened in one of the most disputed chapters in the history of science -- the . I'll be pursuing those questions, and others, with a panel of experts and an audience made up of participants at this year's Institute course in Dublin. If there's a topic you think we should be talking about in that special edition of Sunday Sequence, do let us know -- or a question you'd like me to put to any of our expert guests.

If you find yourself in Belfast this Sunday afternoon, you have a rare opportunity to see Roland Joffé's glorious spectable of a film The Mission the way it was intended to be enjoyed -- on a big screen. The Queen's Film Theatre is screening the film at 3.15 p.m. on Sunday as part of the .

Here's how the QFT describes the film: "A visually stunning epic with a mesmerizing score by Ennio Morricone, The Mission recounts the true story of two men, a man of the sword (Robert De Niro) and a man of the cloth (Jeremy Irons) - both Jesuit missionaries who defied the colonial forces of Spain and Portugal to save an Indian tribe from slavery in mid-18th century South America."

After the film, I'll host a conversation between the audience and our panel: Jesuit priest Fr Alan McGuckian SJ, Les Reid from the Humanist Association of Northern Ireland, and Sheikh Anwar Mady, Imam of the Belfast Islamic Centre.

The Prime Minister David Cameron has apologised to the families of those who were killed on Bloody Sunday and has accepted, on behalf of the government, that the actions of the British Army on that day were "wrong".

Watch David Cameron's statement .
Read David Cameron's statement in full .
Read The Bloody Sunday Report .

The Irish Times has published the results of a poll, carried out in the Republic, showing that the Irish population overwhelmingly believes Cardinal Seán Brady should resign from office because of the sex abuse scandals in the Irish church.

The findings: 76 per cent said the cardinal should resign, 15 per cent said he should not, and 9 per cent had no opinion.

The cardinal faced most opposition in Dublin, where 83 per cent felt he should resign, while the most supportive region was Connacht/Ulster, where the figure fell to 67 per cent.

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thinks it can. In a major speech on faith and the environment, he celebrates the positive potential of faith in the world and bemoans the "soullessness" of the modern age. Both the global environmental crisis and the international financial crisis are, he claims, "the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with - and our perception of - Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us." Quoting C.S. Lewis, the Prince of Wales makes a case for a return to traditional values: "Sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time".

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The government has asked Lord Patten, one of the country's to oversee the arrangements for the Pope's state visit to Britain in September. Meanwhile, the civil servant who sent the infamous "condom memo" has been banned from overseas appointments and given a ".