RELIGION

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A firearms store and gun range in suburban Kansas City refused to let a Muslim woman use the range unless she removed her hijab, a Muslim civil rights organization alleged in a federal lawsuit.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the law firm of Baldwin & Vernon in Independence alleges that the gun range at Frontier Justice in Lee's Summit enforces its dress code in a discriminatory way that disproportionately affects Muslim women.

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First, the major Muslim-American advocacy group reported that a “mole” had infiltrated the leadership of one of its state branches. Then, only days later, the organisation said a “spy” at a US mosque had passed information on to an “anti-Muslim” group.

The two incidents, revealed earlier this month by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have shaken Muslim advocates in the United States and renewed longstanding concerns about spying on the community.

“Community members were shocked and saddened to learn about this specific situation, but a lot of people were also not surprised that an anti-Muslim hate group was targeting CAIR and spying this way,” said Whitney Siddiqi, community affairs director at CAIR-Ohio.

The CAIR chapter said on December 15 that it had sacked Romin Iqbal, its executive and legal director in the Columbus-Cincinnati area, for “egregious ethical and professional violations”.

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Pope Francis urged Vatican cardinals, bishops and bureaucrats on Thursday to embrace humility this Christmas season, saying their pride, self-interest and the "glitter of our armor" was perverting their spiritual lives and corrupting the church's mission.

As he had in the past ,Francis used his annual Christmas address to take Vatican administrators to task for their perceived moral and personal failings, denouncing in particular those pride-filled clerics who "rigidly" hide behind Catholic Church traditions rather than seek out the neediest with humility.

As they have in the past, cardinals and bishops sat stone-faced as they listened to Francis lecture them in the Hall of Blessings, which was otherwise decked out in jolly twinkling Christmas trees and poinsettias.

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A court in East Timor jailed a defrocked American priest for 12 years on Tuesday, his lawyer said, after he was charged with sexually abusing more than a dozen girls over decades.

The case was the first time that allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by a priest have gone to trial in the staunchly Catholic country.

Richard Daschbach, 84, founded a shelter in the early 1990s for orphans, vulnerable children and victims of abuse.

His lawyer, Miguel Faria, in comments broadcast by online news portal SMnewstimor, said his legal team did not accept the sentence and would co-ordinate with the defendant and his family to prepare an appeal.

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Six asylum seekers Pope Francis is helping relocate from Cyprus expressed gratitude and hope as they left to start their new lives in Italy on Thursday barely a week before Christmas.

Cypriot authorities had said the pontiff, who visited the divided island earlier this month, would take 50 migrants, who also include Muslims, in a gesture of "solidarity".

Authorities said a dozen people left on Thursday.

A Vatican source told AFP that the first group would meet the pope on Friday.

Hinda Warsame, 25, from Somalia, and her sisters Naima, 22, and Fadoumo, 19, came to Cyprus this year.

The trio grew up in Saudi Arabia but said they were caught with expired papers and jailed before being deported to Somalia - an unfamiliar and dangerous country where they had barely any family.