Pro-life campaigners in the North have called on people to push the SDLP to explain why they have suspended three councillors who abstained from voting in a motion that called for women not to be intimidated by “harassment” from anti-abortion campaigners. The Belfast City Council vote, calling for councillors to condemn any such harassment across…

Priests could have a role in sharing sensitive information which would help families left grieving after the Troubles, the Primate of All Ireland has said. Archbishop Eamon Martin told a Mass for the Disappeared in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, there are people on all sides who carry secrets, “memories of their own involvement in…

Marriage and family outreach movements with international aspects have been urged to promote next year’s World Meeting of Families. Speaking at a gathering of 17 groups convened by the Irish Bishops’ Conference’s Council for Marriage and the Family, Fr Tim Bartlett, Secretary General of the World Meeting of Families 2018, thanked the assembled representatives and…

An iconic statue of the crucified Christ has been reinstated outside a church on Belfast’s Falls Road. The 20-foot ‘Passion of Christ’ figure fell from the cross outside St Paul’s Church in February. Clerics and parishioners acted quickly to move the statue and used a trolley to take it from the scene. A spokesperson for…

Catholic schools and religious education experts have criticised State proposals to remove religious education as a core element in Ireland’s primary school curriculum. Under a consultation document issued by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, no space is explicitly set aside in school curriculum for religious education, in contrast to the current curriculum, introduced…

‘Friends of Cuan Mhuire’, a new nationwide network to support people in recovery from addiction, opened a centre in Tralee, Co. Kerry last week. Bishop Ray Browne, who made the initiative one of the special projects for the ‘Year of Mercy’ in the Diocese of Kerry, said he hopes that the new centre at 11…

Irish bishops have emphasised the need for the Government to use every effort to protect religious minorities from persecution, following the latest bombings targeting Christians in Egypt. Bishop John McAreavey, Chair of the Bishops Council for Justice and Peace, said the bombings at two Coptic Christian churches in Cairo on Palm Sunday were “clearly a…

A group of former republican prisoners has asked the bishops to clarify the rules around placing Irish tricolours on coffins inside churches during funerals in the North. Flags and paramilitary trappings have been banned since the former Bishop of Derry, Dr Edward Daly took the decision in 1987 when shots were fired over the coffin…