"Benedict baptizes Italian Muslim"

Adapted from the account by Nicole Winfield, of the AP, in Easter Sunday's San Antonio EXPRESS - NEWS, March 23, 2008.

"VATICAN CITY -- Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism on Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.

"As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over [Magdi] Allam's head and said a brief prayer in Latin."