Germany's top Protestant cleric, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, has criticised Germany's role as a major global arms exporter, the largest weapons seller in Europe as a whole.

A survey by Public Religion Research released March 6 shows that mainline Protestant clergy are much more likely to identify themselves as liberal and Democrat than conservative or Republican.

Germany's two largest churches are shrinking, but the Evangelical Church in Germany, the country's biggest Protestant grouping, has dropped below 25 million members for the first time since the unification of Germany in 1990

A year of public events and discussions to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Protestant reformer Jean Calvin is being launched in Geneva, a cradle of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, part of Switzerland since 1815.

For the first time in Germany, a Protestant church has been turned into a synagogue. The Rev Alfred Buss of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, where it is located, said the new place of worship is a "house of hope".

Parents in Northern Ireland, which is seeking to recover from years of conflict and sectarianism, would like to see single-faith denominational schools replaced by integrated ones, a new survey has shown.

The French cleric who heads the main grouping of Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant Christian denominations in Europe has proposed the creation of a Council of European Churches that would also include the Roman Catholic Church.

As Cubans absorbed the news that communist leader Fidel Castro had stepped down, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, prepared to welcome Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, as he visits the country.

The compassionate actions of human beings, not their claims against each other, reflect the will of God and the transforming power of Jesus the Prince of Peace, say the heads of the churches in Jerusalem this Christmastide.

A unique gathering of high level church leaders starting on Tuesday 6 November 2007 near Nairobi, Kenya, features the broadest range of Christian traditions ever represented at a global meeting, says its organisers.