Today’s Religion News Roundup brings you soothsayers, fortune tellers, astrologers, a ‘vampire’, and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

With the flim-flam out of the way, there’s also room for the Samaritan (“the smallest sect in the world”), China’s whining about the Dalai Lama, and some religion/abortion issues.

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has spent nine years looking into allegations from thousands of former pupils of state schools and orphanages, some which date back more than 60 years.

It is due to report on Wednesday while a second report looking into how sex abuse complaints were handled by the Catholic Church will be published by the commission in the summer.

It is thought some 500 priests have been implicated in the abuse allegations.

Amid protests against reported church destructions, the city of Hanoi has ordered one of its districts to stop construction work on land claimed by the Catholic church.

The move was seen as a surprise turnaround by Communist authorities who since March demolished at least one historic church building in the Central Highlands, Christians said.

Government work crews reportedly destroyed a Protestant church building of Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), or ECVN(S), in the area of Banmethuot om March 11.

Pope Benedict XVI has ordered a probe into the ultra-conservative Legionaries of Christ after allegations that the order’s late founder Marcial Maciel secretly fathered a child.

The leadership recently admitted that Maciel, a cult figure among Legionaries, led a “double life” after the discovery of his liaison with the mother of his daughter.

The Legionaries of Christ, an influential Roman Catholic religious order, have been shaken by new revelations that their founder, who died a year ago, had an affair with a woman and fathered a daughter just as he and his thriving conservative order were winning the acclaim of Pope John Paul II.

Jim Fair, a spokesman for the Legionaries, said only: “We have learned some things about our founder’s life that are surprising and difficult for us to understand. We can confirm that there are some aspects of his life that were not appropriate for a Catholic priest.”

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles has launched a federal grand jury investigation into Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in connection with his response to the alleged molestation of children by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

One federal law enforcement source said such a prosecution could be brought under a federal statute that makes it illegal to “scheme . . . to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

One of two priests — who authorities say for years stole cash from their Florida church’s offering plate and hid it in the church ceiling and offshore bank accounts to pay for lavish lifestyles — has pleaded guilty

Prosecutors say the priests plucked cash from the offering plate and spent it on upscale homes, gambling trips to Las Vegas with a mistress, even a $275,000 rare coin collection.

The ongoing row between the Catholic Church and the Spanish Government has erupted again after a judge banned the crucifix from a primary school.

The ruling came after parents won a three-year legal battle with the local authorities over a crucifix in Macias Picavea school in Valladolid, northern Spain.

Catholics who claim they have seen the Virgin Mary will be forced to remain silent about the apparitions until a team of psychologists, theologians, priests and exorcists have fully investigated their claims under new Vatican guidelines aimed at stamping out false claims of miracles.

The Pope has instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition, to draw up a new handbook to help bishops snuff out an explosion of bogus heavenly apparitions.

The Vatican’s daily newspaper marked the 40th anniversary of the “The White Album” by dismissing as a “quip” John Lennon’s notorious claim that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ.

At the time, the comment by Lennon to a London newspaper in 1966 infuriated Christians, particularly in the United States, some of whom burned Beatles’ albums in huge pyres. [video]

The Roman Catholic Church has told a disputed visionary to stop disseminating within the Archdiocese of Baltimore messages she purportedly receives from the Virgin Mary.

Archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine said O’Brien’s letter was prompted by confusion and anxiety among the faithful stemming from the heightened apocalyptic language in a recent ‘vision’ by Gianna Sullivan.

Extraordinarily for secular France, in the Alsace-Moselle region the state not only helps to finance the construction of places of worship but also approves the appointments of clergy members and even pays their salaries. But not for Islam.

Plus: France has only four Muslim schools. So the 8,847 Roman Catholic schools have become a refuge for Muslims seeking what an overburdened, secularist public sector often lacks: spirituality, an environment in which good manners count alongside mathematics and higher academic standards.

Modern culture is so devoid of faith that some people are declaring God “dead” and entire nations are losing their identity, Pope Benedict XVI warned yesterday.

His comments, made during a Mass at the start of a month-long synod of Roman Catholic bishops from around the world, come amid growing concern about the decline in church attendance and interest in religion in many Western nations.

The day after the Church of England issued an “apology” for having “misunderstood” the work of Charles Darwin, the Vatican has announced that it will organise a debate on the thorny question of Christian belief and the theory of evolution.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s new Decree on Child Protection includes the most detailed rules yet for how priests, employees and volunteers should interact with children.

The latest version of the decree, which is updated every five years, lists for the first time examples of physical contact that would be appropriate or inappropriate under church rules.

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