truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

March is the season for Shinto religious fertility festivals in Japan at which symbolic phalluses are offered to the gods for business fortune as well as good sexual and marital luck. In the small town of Komaki, a 2-meter-long phallus is carried through town every year and presented to the local temple. The best-known celebration is the Kanamara Matsuri ("Festival of the Iron Penis") in Kawasaki, where colorful phallus floats abound and delight the children of all ages who line the streets.

Representatives of about 300 Islamic madrassa schools, meeting in New Delhi in April, decided that Muslims could not buy health insurance because the Quran forbids gambling (although they said they would continue to explore ways of reconciling Sharia law with health care financing).

Padre Pio, who died in 1968 and was sponsored for sainthood by Pope John Paul II, has been a controversial figure, as News of the Weird reported in 1999. He was wildly loved by his parishioners, yet viewed skeptically by some Vatican officials who found his claim of hands bleeding from crucifixion holes (similar to those of Jesus), and og having been eye-gouged in a wrestling match with the devil, to be difficult to authenticate. On orders from Pope Benedict XVI , Padre Pio's body was exhumed in March, to be placed on public display for several months at the Vatican, even though problematic for two reasons. The top part of his skull is exposed, presenting an unsettling image, but more important, there obviously are no crucifixion holes or scars on his hands or feet.

Padre Pio, who died in 1968 and was sponsored for sAin'thood by Pope John Paul II, has been a controversial figure, as News of the Weird reported in 1999. He was wildly loved by his parishioners, yet viewed skeptically by some Vatican officials who found his claim of hands bleeding from crucifixion holes (similar to those of Jesus), and of having been eye-gouged in a wrestling match with the devil, to be difficult to authenticate. On orders from Pope Benedict XVI, Padre Pio's body was exhumed in March, to be placed on public display for several months at the Vatican, even though problematic for two reasons. The top part of his skull is exposed, presenting an unsettling image, but more important, there obviously are no crucifixion holes or scars on his hands or feet.

Among the recent victims of internal religious strife in Malaysia was Kamariah Ali, 57, who long ago renounced Islam and started worshipping a two-story-tall "sacred teapot" she had built for her Sky Kingdom cult (emphasizing the "purity of water"). She was sentenced to jail as a failed Muslim in 2005, and the teapot destroyed, and in March 2008, another court found that she had been insufficiently rehabilitated and ordered her back to jail.

In February, televangelist Jim Bakker (who lost his Praise The Lord ministry in the 1980s in fraud convictions that led to a five-year prison stint) began broadcasting from Morningside, his new religious development in southern Missouri that bears a strong resemblance to PTL's Heritage USA project. According to a February report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "hundreds" of Heritage contributors ponied up this time, too, and despite the fact that each lost 99 percent of the value of their $1,000 investments, some even signed over their $6.54 restitution checks (following the fraud settlement) to Bakker's new venture. The newspaper, observing Bakker's debut from the new studio, noted that he managed to hold off for 41 minutes into the show before making his first appeal for donations.