“Cookies, Tea and Poetry” — A reading and open-mic event is set for 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the lounge of the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, 333 N.W. 35th St. Featured readers will be writers and parishioners of Good Samaritan who gather to write on Friday mornings. They include Linda Gelbrich, Be Davison Herrera, Marjorie Power, Max Power and Karen Stevens. After the reading, audience members will be invited to read a poem or other short piece of writing. Refreshments will be served. Information: 754-7198.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI stressed the church’s opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday, pressing the Vatican’s case with the U.S. leader who is already under fire on those issues from some conservative Catholics and bishops back home.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI called Tuesday, July 7, for a new world financial order guided by ethics and the search for the common good, denouncing the profit-at-all-cost mentality blamed for bringing about the global financial meltdown.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Leaders of the Episcopal Church, gathering in Anaheim for their first national convention in three years, reopened fractious debate this week over whether to authorize marriage rites for same-sex couples and to repeal a de facto ban on the consecration of gay bishops.

Birthday celebration concert: A concert honoring Gordon Tjernlund on his 85th birthday is set for Thursday at First Baptist Church, 125 N.W. 10th St. Those attending can greet Tjernlund at 6:30 p.m. The concert, at 7 p.m., will include selections performed by Dennis Bell; Felicia Balschweid; the Master’s Men, directed by Paul Jacobson; the O.K. Chorale; and the Gospel band Nervous Breakdown. Refreshments will be served afterward. Tjernlund was director of music at First Baptist for many years, and while there, organized the Christian Artist Concert Series and the Corvallis Choir Festival, which ran for 12 years, with various churches hosting multiple church choirs joining for annual concerts. He was director of the Town Choir, the Travelin’ Gospel Singers, the Sonshine Singers, the Master’s Men and the O.K. Chorale. Information: 745-5122 or vollheim@peak.org.

NEW YORK — Sayyid Syeed remembers an interfaith event several years ago when a Jewish leader went to embrace him, saw someone snapping a photo, then suddenly pulled back.