Pope Francis has led renewed calls for an end to anti-Christian persecution.  Leading his weekly Sunday audience in Rome, the Pontiff celebrated the life of newly-beatified Lebanese martyr Syriac Bishop Flavien-Michel Malke but then departed from his scripted address to issue a call to the international community to act on the continuing persecution of Christians.…

Our Lady of Fatima bound for Syria The statue of Our Lady of Fatima will leave Portugal for Syria on September 7 to be offered for veneration in Damascus. Intended as a sign of Christian solidarity with suffering Syrians, the pilgrimage is a response to an appeal from His Beatitude Gregory III Laham, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, and…

The Diocese of Down & Connor is hosting its second Faith and Life Convention on Saturday, September 26 in Our Lady and St Patrick’s College, Knock, Belfast beginning at 10am. The Faith and Life Convention is a forum for people to gather together and to take part in a range of conversations about the meaning…

Mass will be celebrated on Sunday, September 6 at 1.30pm in St Aengus’ Church in Burt, Co. Donegal for motor bikers. This will be a time to pray and remember all those bikers who have lost their lives in recent times and a time to ask for God’s blessing. After the Mass all the bikes…

Each year pilgrims gather on the Sunday after September 25, the feast day of St Finbarr, patron saint of the Diocese of Cork, to honour him and ask for his blessing. This year pilgims will gather on Sunday, September 27 in Gougane Barra to celebrate ‘Gougane Sunday’. Rosary will be recited in the oratory at…

John Allen reports from Nigeria on inter-faith relations