Pope Benedict XVI publicly baptized on Monday an Egyptian-born Muslim journalist, known for his renunciation of Islamic beliefs. The traditional Easter vigil service held on Monday at St. Peter's Basilica, marked the beginning of 55-year-old Magdi Allam's life as a Roman Catholic, after he admitted that he has been a non-practicing Muslim all his adult life. Taking "Christian" for his middle name, Allam, a deputy director for the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, wrote in an article, "I had to do this. Beyond extremists and Islamist terrorism at the global level, the root of evil is inherent in a physiologically violent and historically conflictual Islam. "

study by a sociologist revealed that more and more women in Italy are opting to lead a hermit's life and turn their backs from the modern world. Sociologist Isacco Turina, a professor at the University of Bologna, said there are over 1,000 hermits currently in the country and many more all over Europe and the United States, a majority of whom are women. But these modern hermits no longer wear long beards and hide away in caves, instead they live in apartments and surf the Internet.

In an attempt to give moral and ethical behavior more significance to current times, the Vatican has recently announced seven new deadly sins, published in an issue of the L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper. The revision of the list comes after 1,500 years, with Vatican officials explaining that the new items address a global "secular" society bent on the concerns in the age of globalization. The sins are said to be an address to the "decreasing sense of sin" in the modern world.

A court ruling made recently has deemed it illegal for males to scratch their private parts in public. The decision was made at Italy's Court of Appeal, where a man's act of scratching his private parts was described as "an act contrary to decorum and public decency. "

Doctors in England restored the eyesight of a blind man by inserting his son's tooth into his eye. Bob McNichol, 57, was blinded two years ago at an aluminum explosion. "I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio, AFP reported.