Clergy

It was offered as a prayer, but it was also a challenge. "Jesus has told us to pray for our enemies," the Rev. Tia Wildermuth told her congregation Sunday morning at First United Methodist Church of Seal Beach. "It's hard to do, but let us pray for the man who did this, in the way that God calls us to do. " The man to whom Wildermuth referred was Scott Dekraai, who is accused of killing eight people at a Seal Beach hair salon Wednesday. At United Methodist, as at other churches in Seal Beach, the tragedy was foremost in people's minds as they sought answers from God for an act that, even their clergy admitted, seemed to defy human understanding.

Norwegians turned to their churches Saturday to try to find comfort in the aftermath of twin attacks that took the lives of at least 92 people, many of them teenagers, and left citizens of this typically calm Scandinavian country in disbelief. Bishop Laila Riksaasen Dahl of the Church of Norway diocese in Tunsberg, along with other clergy, met with survivors and relatives of those slain when a gunman went on a rampage at a youth camp on Utoya Island. Riksaasen Dahl told the Norwegian daily Aftenposten that many of the young people had seen close friends gunned down, or had themselves been victims of the shooting.

Syrian politicians, intellectuals and clergy were given an unusual opportunity to criticize the country's security apparatus on national television Sunday during the first round of state-sponsored and opposition-boycotted dialogue meetings. The dialogue, aimed at easing tensions in a nation racked by months of protests against the regime of President Bashar Assad, came a day after Human Rights Watch issued a devastating report chronicling the bloody practices of the security forces during the anti-regime uprising.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a public endorsement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday as he looked to resolve a months-long rift among the country's conservative power elites. "While there are weaknesses and problems … the composition of the executive branch is good and appropriate, and the government is working. The government and parliament must help each other," Khamenei said in an address to members of parliament shown later on state television.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday as Khamenei looked to resolve a months-long rift among the country's conservative power elite. "While there are weaknesses and problems ... the composition of the executive branch is good and appropriate, and the government is working. The government and parliament must help each other," Ayatollah Khamenei said in an address to parliament members, later shown on state television. The pronouncement by the country's most powerful figure has followed a period of turbulence between him and his onetime political favorite.

Leaders of the Claremont School of Theology will announce Monday the gift of $40 million from an Arizona couple to help expand the Christian divinity institution into a university that will include training for Jewish and Muslim clergy. The donation from David Lincoln, a Claremont trustee, and his wife, Joan, is the largest ever to the 126-year-old theology school, which enrolls about 240 students in master's and doctorate programs in religion and counseling. The couple also gave $10 million to the school last year.

A Mexican man who claims he was abused at age 12 by a priest shuttled between Los Angeles and Mexico can sue the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles in U.S. court under a 222-year-old law addressing foreign complaints, a federal judge has ruled. The case brought against church leaders in Los Angeles and Mexico alleges that Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera was able to assault dozens of children in both countries because church officials conspired to conceal his history of pedophilia.

As President Obama and his aides prepared to memorialize the dead in Tucson, they were dealing with death close to home. Two days after the Tucson mass shooting, Ashley Turton, the wife of Dan Turton, Obama's liaison to the House of Representatives, died when her car struck a wall in their garage, igniting a flash fire. A pall fell over the White House, already dark from the news in Arizona. Several members of Obama's staff sought to help their colleague and the couple's twin toddlers and year-old baby.

Iran's supreme leader wrapped up an unprecedented 10-day visit to the Iranian seminary city of Qom on Friday that was widely seen as an attempt to bolster support among those in a clerical establishment either indifferent or hostile to his conservative agenda. FOR THE RECORD: Iran clergy: An article in the Oct. 30 Section A about Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and reform-minded clergy said an influential cleric, Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, died 40 years ago. He died last year.

Encouraged in part by outspoken clergy and Pope Benedict XVI, leading figures among France's Roman Catholic conservatives are distancing themselves from their political ally, President Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing that his policies toward Roma migrants and others fuel racial intolerance. Already weakened by consistently low popularity ratings, Sarkozy had provoked stiff criticism from opponents on the left, as well as the United Nations, for deporting some Roma and dismantling their camps in the name of crime prevention.