As the Church celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, a French bishop announced the 70th officially recognised miraculous cure of a pilgrim to the Lourdes grotto where Mary appeared 160 years ago. Bishop Jacques Benoit-Gonnin of Beauvais formally declared this week “the prodigious, miraculous character” of the healing of Sr Bernadette Moriau, a…
Love Notes My wife died suddenly last year and I am facing my retirement years alone. It seems all my hobbies are for two together. My children and grandchildren visit me at weekends, but my weekdays are long and very lonely. How does a widower in his 60s fill his days? ANSWER: Losing…
Martin O’Brien meets Fr Edward O’Donnell, a priest happy in his ministry and his own skin Fr Edward O’Donnell, first ever Catholic ecumenical canon in Belfast’s Protestant cathedral, parish priest in one of the North’ s most well to do areas, former private secretary to the late Bishop Cahal Daly, noted homilist, and proud…
Classically Christianity has listed seven sins as ‘deadly’ sins, meaning that most everything else we do which is not virtuous somehow takes its root in one these congenital propensities. These are the infamous seven: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. In spiritual literature the first three – pride, greed and lust – get…
The Notebook Fr Conor McDonough Among the noble efforts to resist the Nazi regime was that of Sophie Scholl and the other members of Munich’s ‘White Rose’ group. This small group of friends printed and distributed thousands of copies of anti-Nazi leaflets, even, with incredible courage, throwing huge bundles of them down the staircase…
Over 600 people gathered in Dún Laoghaire last weekend to celebrate the value of unborn children, with the aim of keeping Ireland’s constitutional protections for the unborn. The event, ‘Loving the 8th’, took place on Saturday, 10 February and was organised by Dún Laoghaire Life Canvass and Cherish All the Children Equally as part of…
A weekend of visual creations For lovers of visual art, Kilkenny Animated is a festival of visual storytelling, hosted by Cartoon Saloon, that will be taking place across a variety of venues around Kilkenny City from February 23-25. Cartoon Saloon are a locally based animation studio who have been nominated twice for Oscars with their…
The World of Books by the books editor The literary commemoration of the Great War takes many curious forms these days. But none can be more curious than the recent suggestion by Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, that a new renaissance of war poetry should be encouraged among modern soldiers. He had in…
Often the Church is accused of holding up difficult ideals while not acting to help people try to achieve these ideals. The charge is, of course, false – helping others is of the essence of Christianity. Often you’ll hear people who are supporting of the campaign to remove the right to life of unborn children…
Personal Profile Claire Devaney tells Colm Fitzpatrick about her youth mission From exciting camps and clubs to vital school ministry, one woman is stepping up to the mark to give religious education a new lease of life. Claire Devaney is Primary School Co-ordinator with Scripture Union Ireland, an ecumenical Christian organisation which focuses on…
Wendy Grace
Martin O'Brien
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Peter Costello
Michael Kelly
Colm Fitzpatrick