Thornhill Ministries in Derry is celebrating a ‘Jubilee of Consolation’ with a festival of flowers entitled ‘Dry the Tears’. The festival is being hosted by Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Steelstown Road, Derry on the weekend of May 6-8 and follows on from the vigil to “dry the tears” which Pope Francis is celebrating in…
Archbishop Eamon Martin and Dean Colum Curry presented over 300 young people with the Muiredach Cross Award and the Pope John Paul II Award at the sixth annual Armagh Diocesan Faith Award Ceremony in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh. The Muiredach Cross Award is aimed at the younger school students in the archdiocese as a…
The head of the US-based Catholic News Service (CNS) has stepped down, following online claims that he was “promoting the LGBT agenda”. Tony Spence, director and editor-in-chief of the US bishops-owned news agency since 2004, had in the days prior to his resignation commented on his Twitter account about legislation where LGBT rights and religious…
Uruguayan Church’s ‘pain and shame’ at unpunished abuse Uruguay’s bishops have apologised for sexual abuses committed by priests 20 years ago that went unpunished because the country’s statute of limitations expired. A statement on the website of the South American country’s bishops’ conference says the Uruguayan Church feels “pain and shame” about “abhorrent acts committed by people who had promised to serve…
A Canadian government bill to legalise euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide has been opposed by the country’s bishops, who have called it “an affront to human dignity, an erosion of human solidarity and a danger to all vulnerable persons”. Among those endangered by the bill, the bishops said, are the elderly, infirm, disabled and sick, many…
Relatives carry the coffin of a relative on a vehicle in Pedernales, Ecuador, after an earthquake struck on April 16 off the country’s Pacific coast. At least 413 people died, nearly 3,000 were injured and thousands were left homeless in the magnitude-7.8 earthquake. original photo: CNS
One way of looking at the Francis pontificate is that he’s universalising what the Latin American Church agreed to at its famous continent-wide gathering in 2007, held at the Marian shrine of Aparecida in Brazil. The signature tunes of the Latin American Church to come out of that meeting – missionary discipleship, pastoral conversion, an…
Dear Editor, The 10 Commandments are a list of religious and moral rules that were given to us by God through Moses. If you look up the term ‘commandment’ in the dictionary you will find “a rule or instruction to be observed as strictly as one of the 10 Commandments”. The commandments that God gave…
Dear Editor, At a time when the role of third level chaplains is being questioned (IC 14/04/2016 ‘Mass attendance a crude measure of chaplaincy support services’) perhaps it is time to look again at clergy deployment priorities. The question I would ask is, why are some parishes being deprived of their full-time priest and yet…
Dear Editor, It is my opinion that a baby in the womb should be fully protected by legal safeguards provided by our Constitution. I cannot reconcile myself with the pro-choice lobby that abortion can be seen as a sensitive intervention in cases of fatal foetal abnormality. When these situations arise perinatal hospice care is the…
Mags Gargan
Austen Ivereigh