In his address to Congress, Pope Francis drew attention to an unlikely American: the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who played no small role in popularizing Buddhism in the West.

Sri Lanka's new president, Maithripala Sirisena, can put an end to extremist Buddhist violence in his country. But will he? 

After a mini-controversy only a few weeks ago regarding a 200-year-old corpse found in full lotus in Mongolia, the internet sensation over mummified Buddhists is back from the dead with new reports of a human skeleton discovered inside…