Faith Digest

Dalai Lama wins Templeton Prize. For his abiding interest in the intersection of science and religion, Tenzin Gyatso—the 14th Dalai Lama—has been named recipient of the 2012 Templeton Prize. The Tibetan Buddhist leader, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Price, will receive the Templeton and its $1.7 million award at a May 14 ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. "With an increasing reliance on technological advances to solve the world's problems, humanity also seeks the reassurance that only a spiritual quest can answer," said John M. Templeton Jr., the president and chairman of the Pennsylvania-based John Templeton Foundation. "The Dalai Lama offers a universal voice of compassion underpinned by a love and respect for spiritually relevant scientific research that centers on every single human being." The Dalai Lama becomes the second person to receive both the Templeton Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Teresa won the first Templeton in 1973 and received the Nobel six years later.

Survey shows mistrust for Muslims in Canada. A new poll shows more than half of all Canadians distrust Muslims. The nationwide survey indicates as many as 52 percent of Canadians feel Muslims can be trusted "a little" or "not trusted at all." The poll showed 48 percent of respondents said Muslims can be trusted "a lot" or "somewhat." What's more, 42 percent of Canadians said discrimination against Muslims is "mainly their fault." Muslims registered the lowest levels of trustworthiness of the religious groups asked about in the survey. Overall, about 70 percent of respondents expressed high levels of trust in Protestants, Catholics and Jews, while 64 percent trusted aboriginal Canadians, and 63 percent trusted immigrants. The online poll surveyed 1,522 Canadians on attitudes toward religions, multiculturalism and sources of racism. The survey was conducted for the Association for Canadian Studies in Montreal and the Toronto-based Canadian Race Relations Foundation as part of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The online survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Student paper under fire for Hitler spoof. A satirical student newspaper is under investigation by Rutgers University after publishing a column in praise of Adolf Hitler and attributing it to a Jewish student activist. An article titled "What about the good things Hitler did?" appeared in The Medium three days before Passover alongside Rutgers student Aaron Marcus' name and photo. A self-described Zionist, Marcus writes columns for the independent Rutgers student newspaper, The Daily Targum, which The Medium sought to spoof. Marcus told a local television station the article hurt him and his family, and noted some of his relatives died in the Holocaust. Rutgers President Richard McCormick called the article "extremely offensive and repugnant," adding, "No individual student should be subject to such a vicious and provocative and hurtful piece, regardless of whether the First Amendment protections apply to such expression." The university is investigating the column as a bias incident, he said.

—Compiled from Religion News Service