Attitudes to gay people in Africa are unlikely to change overnight, even though bishops have publicly defended the inherent dignity of people with homosexual tendencies, Accra’s Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle has said. Claiming that negative attitudes against homosexuals have existed for “millennia” in Africa, the Ghanaian archbishop said “it would be a bit deceptive to think”…

The Church’s refusal to allow the divorced and remarried receive the Eucharist can cause people to turn from the Church and God himself, Berlin’s Archbishop Heiner Koch has told the Synod of Bishops. In his three-minute address to the gathered bishops, Dr Koch said the Church’s theological arguments “do not silence the questions in the…

US cardinal warns against ‘older brother syndrome’  Those who live the faith assiduously must resist temptations to feel neglected or upset by the Synod of Bishops’ emphasis on those who struggle more, according to Washington, DC’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl. Recalling the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, the cardinal said, “Yes, there could be…

Iraq’s most prominent bishop has called upon the synod of bishops to “feel the experience” of Christian refugees who, rather than converting to Islam when threatened with violence, have abandoned their homes and possessions.  In a homily opening the synod’s sixth day, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako said “Faith, like love, is a…

Cormac O’Duffy, a former teacher and graduate of UCD and UL, had his oratorio The Wedding Feast of the Lamb premiered in front of a full church at St John the Evangelist in Philadelphia during the World Meeting of Families (WMOF). The work, dedicated to marriage and family, was performed by the Choirs of Villanova…

The Irish Association for the Lasallian Mission (De La Salle) held its AGM in Castletown, Portlaoise recently. Fifty school principals, teachers and others spent time together to review and plan for how best to promote its mandate of “human and Christian education”. Its president, Tom O’Neill, Waterford welcomed the gatherings from all over Ireland and…