By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged

NEW YORK — Live from New York, it’s … Friday morning.

I’m filing this edition of Weekend Plug-in from my temporary, 38th-floor apartment in Midtown Manhattan. I’ve spent the week enjoying a mix of work and fun in Metropolis.

At least 18 of @MLB's 30 franchises — 60% — will host faith nights during the 2023 season, my research for @ReligionMag found.

I traveled to San Diego and Los Angeles to report this in-depth baseball-and-religion story. https://t.co/eW2WZN6ezn

— Bobby Ross Jr. (@bobbyross) August 17, 2023

As I type this, Pope Francis has arrived in Mongolia, “becoming the first pope to visit the vast country with one of the world’s smallest Catholic populations, nestled between Russia and China — two nations with complicated Vatican relationships,” as the National Catholic Reporter’s Christopher White reports.

Francis has long expressed an interest in visiting Russia and China, but Mongolia might be as close as he gets, the Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca explains.

As Mongolia Catholics welcome Francis, the nation’s evangelicals wrestle with growing pains, according to Christianity Today’s Angela Lu Fulton.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. Our big story concerns the return of a Washington state high school football coach who won a school prayer case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read the full column.

This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.

Associated Press photo by Ed Komenda