—Samuel M. Sherrard is the new president and chief executive officer of Youth for Christ International (YFCI). Sherrard, 55, founded Youth for Christ in Colombo in his native Sri Lanka in 1966. He became executive director of Youth for Christ in Hawaii in 1974 and YFCI Americas area director in 1994. For the past 18 years, Sherrard has also pastored Leeward Community Church in Pearl City, Oahu, now the largest Christian and Missionary Alliance church in Hawaii.

—The Russian Orthodox Church has taken formal steps to begin a canonization process of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar. Nicholas, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were executed by revolutionist Bolsheviks in 1918, the beginning of an atheist Communist reign that lasted until 1991. Unlike the Catholic church, which bases sainthood on holiness or miracles, martyrdom itself qualifies as a condition of sainthood in the Orthodox church.

—The Church of England has appointed its first pub chaplain, 57-year-old layman Colin Shaw. In the unpaid post, Shaw gives counsel to patrons at Cambridge Blue, a tavern in the university city. Shaw, who studied pastoral theology at Cambridge University after retiring, has been a pub regular for seven years..