PEOPLE

Atlanta Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, a former president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, was scheduled to have surgery for prostate cancer Nov. 5 at Emory University Hospital. The archbishop said the cancer is at an early stage and was diagnosed after a biopsy he had in September.

Pam Melroy, commander of the space shuttle Discovery, is a graduate of Bishop Kearney High School, Irondequoit, N.Y. Four Bishop Kearney students covered the Oct. 23 takeoff from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as accredited student journalists. A former teacher of Melroy, School Sister of Notre Dame Stephania Walczak, remarked, “She was such a sparkler, and she’s always wanted to do this.”

In October, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the Interfaith Alliance asked 1,000 adults to agree or disagree with the following statement: “Presidential candidates should not use their religion or faith to influence voters to support them.” Sixty-eight percent said they agreed. Even 60 percent of respondents who identified themselves as regular churchgoers agreed presidential hopefuls should not use their faith as a campaign tool.

The spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, Imam Ahmed Alzaree, announced Oct. 29 -- three days before he was to begin the job at Ohio’s largest mosque -- that he was resigning. Alzaree said allegations by bloggers that he was anti-Semitic and had associated with an individual suspected of having terrorist ties so poisoned the atmosphere that he and his wife, Marwa, decided to live elsewhere.

Fifty-three percent of the people who voted for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 would not make the same choice today, according to a recent survey by the Iranian Student Polling Agency in Tehran. Most respondents rated Ahmadinejad’s administration “satisfactory” for foreign policy and for “preserving Islamic principles,” but 52 percent rated him “unsatisfactory” for overall performance.

National Catholic Reporter, November 9, 2007