The Christmas holidays weren’t just a time for family, friends and recreation for one group of Irish people who spent the week after St Stephen’s day 7,000 kilometres from home, building a dairy in Burkino Faso. Flying out on December 27 and not returning to Ireland until January 6, Cavan optician Paul Connolly and seven…
Church leaders in the Congo have condemned security forces’ attacks on Catholic protestors that have left at least eight people dead and 120 detained. The Vatican Embassy in Kinshasa backed local church officials, saying that “the promotion of social justice and the defence of political and civil rights of citizens are an integral part of…
Christians need to work towards generating a “new narrative”, as the power-sharing talks resume in Northern Ireland, Bishop Noel Treanor has said. Inspired by Pope Francis’ World Day of Peace message in which he spoke of a “contemplative gaze”, the bishop of Down and Connor said there was a connection between contemplation and responsible politics.…
Seven bishops have responded to bishops’ conferences that issued guidelines that foresee the possibility of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics returning to the Sacraments in some circumstances. The norms and guidelines are the bishops’ responses to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. Archbishop Tomash Peta and Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana and retired Archbishop…
The View When someone you love dies suddenly, it is a terrible moment, often of disbelief because the person who went out to work or to school, or the little child who went out to play is never coming back. All your realities are shattered, things can never be the same again. Gradually there…
The Hollywood actresses – sometimes they prefer to be called ‘female actors’ – made a global impact, surely, by dressing in (very chic) black for the Golden Globe awards. As did Oprah Winefrey’s electrifying speech vowing that the sexual harassment and even routine rape which has been part of Hollywood culture since Joan Crawford was…
Catholics and people of goodwill should be “missionaries for the cause of life”, Armagh’s Archbishop Eamon Martin has said in a new year pastoral message that has been seen as the Church’s first major intervention ahead of next year’s expected referendum on abortion. “To serve human life is to serve God,” he said, quoting Pope…
Becoming a bishop in modern Ireland is a great step into the unknown, the incoming Bishop of Ossory has said. Speaking on Kilkenny’s St Mary’s Cathedral on the announcement of his episcopal appointment, Bishop Elect Dermot Farrell said he will have much to learn in the years ahead, and that being called to be a…
The Church needs to hold to its principles and pick its battles, writes David Quinn The Churches in Ireland tend to have an extremely softly-softly attitude towards the State and the Government of the day. They rarely criticise either and when they do, it is in a very muted way. There are several reasons…
Catholic agencies in the US have been struggling to keep vulnerable people warm as a spate of brutally cold weather envelops the eastern two-thirds of the country. Temperatures plunged to -15C in some places. From Montana to Florida and Texas to Maine homeless shelters opened additional hours to shield people from frosty Arctic winds, which…
Susan Gately
Chai Brady
Nuala O’Loan
Mary Kenny
Greg Daly
David Quinn