In the News (August 2025)
Atheists less than 1% of federal prison population
According to the most recent data, less than 1 percent of federal prison inmates claim to be atheists.
Hemant Mehta, the “Friendly Atheist,” filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to see the latest numbers of the federal prison population and their religious preferences.
As of May, he noted that there are just 113 atheists out of the 155,174 people incarcerated in the U.S. federal prison system, which is just 0.073 percent. That is significantly below the number of self-described atheists in the general population, which is about 5 percent. (“Nones,” those without any religious affiliation, make up about 29 percent of the general population.)
Protestants make up about 39 percent of the general population, but only account for 17.3 percent of federal prisoners. Catholics are 19 percent of the population, but 12.5 percent of federal inmates. Muslims are 1 percent of the population, but 9.6 percent of those inmates. The discrepancies arise from the fact that more than a third (35.7 percent) of federal inmates did not state their religious preference.
Religious groups can take on N.Y. abortion rule
The Supreme Court on June 16 ordered a New York court to take a new look at whether some religious organizations should be excluded from a state regulation requiring health insurance plans to cover abortions.
The justices acted after the court unanimously ruled earlier in June that Wisconsin discriminated against a Catholic charity by forcing it to pay state unemployment taxes.
The New York case poses a similar issue because the state exempts religious employers if their purpose is to spread religious values and they primarily employ and serve people of their faith. But religious groups that serve and employ people regardless of their beliefs don’t qualify for the exemption.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and other church groups challenged the rule.
It’s the second time the nation’s highest court has sent the case back to New York courts. Last year, the New York Court of Appeals upheld the regulation after taking into account the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in 2021 in favor of a Catholic foster care agency in Philadelphia that refused to work with same-sex couples because of its religious opposition to same-sex marriage.
Abortions decriminalized for women in England, Wales
British lawmakers voted June 17 to prevent women from being prosecuted for having an abortion in England and Wales, a landmark decision that sets the country on a diverging path from the United States on an emotive social issue.
In effect, the vote will largely decriminalize terminating pregnancies that are later than 24 weeks, the current limit, although medical professionals who aid the process could still be prosecuted.
Britain’s Parliament, by a vote of 370 to 137, approved an amendment to a bill that would change Victorian-era laws governing abortion. The vote comes at a time of intense debate over abortion in the United States, where the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022 and threw it to the 50 states to legislate their own laws.
By contrast, surveys suggest that the vast majority of the British population — consistently around 88 percent, according to YouGov, a polling agency — say they believe that women should have the right to an abortion.
Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion
A new Pew Research Center study measuring the evolution of the global religious population shows Muslims are the fastest-growing faith group, followed by the religiously unaffiliated (Nones). Though it remained the world’s largest religion, the Christian population declined between 2010 and 2020.
Pew’s Global Religious Landscape study, released June 9, is the second edition of a demographic report of religious groups, started in 2010.
The study focuses on Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Christians, Muslims and the religiously unaffiliated. It also looks at “others,” which include folk and traditional religions, wiccans, Zoroastrians and more.
The world’s Muslim population increased by 347 million people over 10 years — more than all the other religions combined — primarily due to natural demographic growth.
“Muslims are having children at a greater number than Muslims are dying,” said Conrad Hackett, a senior demographer at Pew Research Center. “Very little of the change in Muslim population size is a result of people becoming Muslim as adults or leaving Islam as adults.”
796 babies buried under Ireland women’s shelter
Authorities in Ireland will soon start excavating a site, formerly run by a group of Catholic nuns, believed to be the burial ground of nearly 800 babies and children. A team of investigators has initiated a forensic probe on June 16.
According to a local historian, 798 children died at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home between 1925 and 1961, but only two were buried in a proper cemetery. The other 796 children are believed to have been dumped in a septic tank, known as the pit, the New York Post reported.
The unmarried pregnant women were sent to Bon Secours Home to give birth. The home was run by a group of Catholic nuns who used to take care of both the children and the mothers.
After the babies were born, they were taken away from their mothers and handed over to the nuns without the consent of their families. However, the mothers were forced to stay there for a year to do unpaid work.
The tragedy at Bon Secours was uncovered in 2014, but the excavation at the site could only begin after the Irish government passed a law in 2022 allowing it to officially dig the site and search for the remains of the children.
Buffalo parishes to pay $80M in settlement
Parishes in the Diocese of Buffalo, N.Y., are set to pay a total of $80 million into the diocese’s $150 million bankruptcy settlement, with the funds due to be paid into a trust by July 15.
Of that $150 million, the diocese will also directly pay $30 million, with its affiliated Catholic organizations contributing $10 million, and real estate sales covering the remainder, diocesan communications director Joe Martone told OSV News.
Martone said the diocese hopes that insurance coverage will realize an estimated additional $150 million for claims, although the diocese is “still in negotiation with the insurers.”
The bankruptcy settlement, agreed to in principle April 22, will resolve the five-year-long proceedings, which began in 2020 to address what now amounts to “approximately 891 cases” — making for “one of the highest caseloads in the country,” Martone previously told OSV News.
Ohio EdChoice program ruled unconstitutional
A Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge ruled Ohio’s EdChoice private school voucher program is unconstitutional, a key moment in a lawsuit in which more than half of the state’s school districts had staked legal claims opposing the program.
“In recognition that this decision may cause significant changes to school funding in Ohio and the high likelihood that the parties will immediately appeal, the judgment in this case shall be stayed,” Judge Jaiza Page wrote.
“We are pleased that the court affirmed what we have been saying all along,” said William L. Phillis, director for the Coalition for Adequacy & Equity of School Funding. “The EdChoice private school voucher program, which has been diverting hundreds of millions of much needed tax dollars from public schools to private schools, is unconstitutional.”
A Dayton Daily News investigation last year found that Ohio awarded $993.7 million for families to send kids to private schools in a recent school year.
A Dayton Daily News analysis of Ohio Department of Education data found that, by that point, the project “largely subsidized families already sending their kids to private schools.”
Wis. high court upends 1849 abortion law
Women in Wisconsin will continue to have access to abortion services under a new ruling from the state’s highest court that invalidates a 176-year-old state law that had banned abortions in nearly every situation. In a 4-3 ruling July 2, the liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s previous decision that overturned the 19th Century law.
The decision ends three years of tumult over the issue following the 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, which had provided women nationwide with a constitutional right to abortions.
Writing for the court’s liberal majority, Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet said the Wisconsin State Legislature had effectively repealed the 1849 law when it enacted additional laws regulating access to abortion.
