? Barbie dolls dressed in chadors and burkas are on display in Florence in an exhibition at the Salone del Cinquecento, sponsored by Mattel, the doll’s makers. The Islamic Barbies are among 500 dolls due to be auctioned by Sotheby’s to raise funds for the Italian branch of Save the Children.
? A member of President Obama’s faith advisory council this week won the $200,000 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Eboo Patel, 34, was awarded the prize for his 2007 autobiography Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Patel is the founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based organisation that unites young people of different religions to perform community service and explore their common values.
? Christians in Peterborough are being invited to put on a teatowel and be photographed for an internet Nativity picture, which they can then download for free. www.getinthepicture.org.uk is the brainchild of Chris Duffett, an evangelist from St Neots, who is running the scheme with Churches Together in Peterborough. He said he wanted to “involve people in the Nativity story and let them participate in it rather than just being told about it”. The initiative is also being promoted this weekend at Rochester Cathedral.
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? A trend for “manger chic” is leading parents to splash out up to £150 on bejewelled turbans and silk pashminas for their children to wear in school Nativity plays. Debenhams stores, surprisingly perhaps, are among those trying to discourage such extravagance. A spokesman explained: “The amount of money that some parents want to spend on their child’s Nativity play appearance would enable the baby Jesus to leave the stable and check into a five-star hotel. It’s silly and we’re doing all that we can to persuade competitive parents to change their minds — it is the season of goodwill after all.”
? The first civil marriage of a gay couple in Latin America, a proposed match that attracted the disapproval of the Roman Catholic Church in Argentina, was blocked at the last minute on Monday. Jos? María Di Bello and Alex Freyre, an HIV-positive couple in Buenos Aires, planned to marry on World Aids Day on Tuesday when the order from a senior judge came through postponing their union.
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? The Vatican has asked a Roman Catholic bishop in Australia to withdraw his offer to hold an Anglican ordination in his diocese as the ordinands include four women. The Right Rev Joe Grech, Bishop of Sandhurst, Victoria said he had checked with the papal nuncio before offering St Kilian’s Church, Sandhurst, to the Right Rev Andrew Curnow, Anglican Bishop of Bendigo. The Vicar-General of Sandhurst, Mgr John White, said that “there was no way we were endorsing [the Anglicans’] theological stance for the ordination of women — it was a generous offer to help when they could not use their own facility.”