Last Friday, following Mass at the Casa Santa Marta, Capuchin Friars Bro. Peter Rodgers (centre), Director of CORI, and Bro. Kevin Crowley, Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless People, were introduced to Pope Francis. Bro. Peter, speaking in Italian, told the Pope how Bro. Kevin has been working with the homeless for 46 years in Dublin.…
Month: January 2016
Maynooth artwork gives ‘the wrong impression’ of Church, Archbishop warns
Cathal Barry
Staff Reporter Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has warned that the artwork displayed at the national seminary in Maynooth gives the “wrong impression” of what the Church’s message is. Noting that the long corridors of St Patrick’s College are “tapestried” with large portraits of bishops, Dr Martin claimed that most of them were “of little or any artistic…
Blessing for all creatures great and small
A dog reacts as it is blessed outside San Anton Church in Madrid, Spain on Sunday, when hundreds of people brought their pets to be blessed for the feast day of St Anthony, patron saint of animals. Photo: Reuters/Andrea Comas
Couple prayed for daughter’s killer
The parents of one of the victims of serial child killer, Robert Black have said they prayed for the murderer, who died in Maghaberry Prison in Co. Antrim last week. In 2011, Black, originally from Scotland, was convicted of the 1981 abduction and murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy from Ballinderry in Lisburn, Co. Antrim. “There…
A century of poetic voices
John Wyse Jackson Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916 edited by Niall MacMonagle (Penguin Ireland, £20.00hb) A plethora of poetry anthologies has appeared in Ireland over the last few years. This latest one takes as its starting point the date of our nation’s foundation myth, 1916. Its editor, a teacher and broadcaster, is an old hand at…
I wouldn’t survive without God – farming icon Anna May McHugh
Mags Gargan
The organiser of the national ploughing championships, the biggest event of its kind in the world, has said that she didn’t know how she would survive without God in her life. In an interview on The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne, the legendary Anna May McHugh said “God is in my life in a…
Our Church must accommodate change
Nuala O’Loan
“It is in the interpretation of individual situations that there is scope for more generosity and more compassion”, writes Nuala O’Loan One of the things which has impressed itself upon me recently is the extent to which the Church in which I grew up has changed so much. That Church was manifestly different from the…
Primate cautions against centenary divisions
Staff reporter The Primate of All-Ireland has warned against allowing this year’s centenary commemorations of the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme to divide Irish people. “I hope that in our remembrance of 1916, we are very aware of the present and the possibility that we could drive a wedge during this year, rather…
Right to life a ‘legal fiction’ if abortion law amended
A senior Fine Gael official has dismissed as “legal fiction” the view that it may be possible to amend the Constitution to retain the general right to life for unborn children, but to allow abortion in the cases of unborn children with life-limiting conditions. Writing in a personal capacity in The Irish Catholic this week,…
Good Friday drinks ban proof of remaining Christian values – claim
The President of the Pioneers Total Abstinence Association has insisted that the ban on the sale of alcohol on Good Friday should remain in place. James Shevlin told The Irish Catholic he would “very much oppose” reversing the ban because “it is an acknowledgment that the country wants to hold onto some of its Christian…