The Church of England will be forbidden by law from performing gay marriage ceremonies in an effort to appease senior Anglicans and Tory MPs.

President Vladimir Putin pledged on Wednesday to crack down on corruption and the flight of capital from Russia in a new campaign to tackle problems that have marred his 13-year rule and blighted the country's business scene.

The minister for faith has broken ranks on gay marriage to warn that David Cameron’s controversial legislation could have a string of ‘unintended consequences’.

German lawmakers on Wednesday passed legislation ensuring parents the right to have their boys circumcised, bringing a close to months of legal uncertainty set off by a regional court’s ruling that equated the practice with bodily harm.

Russian lawmakers are reworking a draft law introducing prison terms for religious offences after signs that Vladimir Putin is concerned it could undermine the delicate balance between the country's many religions.

Large majorities of west Europeans favor the legalization of assisted suicide, now allowed only in four countries on the continent, according to a new survey.

Bishop Justin Welby, the new archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the world’s estimated 77 million Anglicans, pledged Friday to seek reconciliation in some of the most contentious issues of gender and sexuality that have split the Anglican Communion.

A plan to legalize same-sex marriage and allow gay couples to adopt was a liberal cornerstone of Francois Hollande's election manifesto earlier this year.

It's rare to be invited to an event five years off and even rarer to bicker about its details, but Germany's Catholic Church finds itself in that delicate situation thanks to an overture from its Protestant neighbors.

As the Russian Orthodox Church continues its ascent as a political force, Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov stands at the center of a swirling argument about the church’s power and its possible influence on President Vladimir V. Putin.

For Kuwait's embattled rulers, clashes earlier this week with anti-government protesters were more than just a sign tensions may be mounting.

The Roman Catholic faith in many advanced countries risks being "eclipsed" by an increasingly secularised and materialistic world, bishops who discussed strategies on how to woo lapsed faithful back to the fold said on Friday.

An increasing majority of people in France believe Islam plays too influential a role in their society and almost half see Muslims as a threat to their national identity, according to a poll published on Thursday.

With hindsight, perhaps the most surprising thing is how long abortion has been off the political agenda in Britain. An intensely divisive political issue elsewhere, the subject rarely makes the front pages here.

At school No. 20 in Russia's troubled region of Chechnya, boys sit on one side of the classroom and girls in headscarves on the other.

Plans by France's Socialist government to legalize same-sex marriage are proving harder to enact than first thought after faith leaders and conservatives mobilized against it even as left-wing deputies try to expand it.

The first abortion clinic on the island of Ireland opened Thursday in downtown Belfast, unleashing angry protests on the street and uniting Catholic and Protestant politicians in calls to investigate the new facility.

At the sound of a bell from the altar, relayed over loud-speakers, about 50,000 people at an open-air mass last month in the Polish capital dropped down to kneel in the street.

As sharply contested parliamentary voting approached in Georgia last week, the country’s Orthodox patriarch implemented his own peculiar pre-election ritual: He arranged for an airplane carrying icons and holy relics to circle over Georgian airspace while priests prayed over the country’s future, in an updated version of an ancient practice employed ahead of enemy invasions and other calamities.

Jewish and Muslim leaders here warned on Monday of rising anti-Semitism among young Muslims, two days after the police arrested 11 men and fatally shot one in raids in a handful of cities aimed at young radical French Muslims.