Catholic tribal leaders in India are worried over a move by Jharkhand’s government to take away tribal status from people who have left their traditional Sarna religion to join other faiths. The eastern state’s move will deprive thousands of tribal people of social benefits meant for their advancement. “It is a deliberate attempt to divide tribal people…
With bishops urging parishioners to be “creative and original” in encouraging family members and friends to come back to the Faith, the initiatives they have developed in their own dioceses set a shining example of how Catholics can be innovative in their own personal spheres of influence. The Mercy on the Mall event which has…
Inés San Martín In October, the government of Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo imposed a sweeping ban on civil protest in Nicaragua, which critics saw as an effort to snuff out a spontaneous protest movement that almost brought them down earlier this year. As is almost always the case here in this…
A Co. Down-based priest and writer has criticised this summer’s World Meeting of Families (WMOF) for watering down the Christian vision of the family to become more acceptable to current secular understandings of family life. Writing in The Furrow, Fr Andrew McMahon observes that although there were “unquestionably edifying aspects” of WMOF2018, a desire for…
Preparing for Christmas can take the stress out of the day, writes Colm Fitzpatrick There are certain facts that you can only learn about by growing older: time is a limited resource; your health is a priority; and of course, Christmas is really stressful. For kids, this festive day is almost other-worldly, where they…
The archbishops of Armagh have pleaded with parishioners not to allow increasingly depressing statistics about homelessness “dull the reality that behind each of these numbers lies a personal story of distress and hardship”. In a joint message due to be released this weekend, Archbishop Eamon Martin and his Church of Ireland counterpart Richard Clarke combine…
A Parent’s Perspective I recently returned from a week in the beautiful Canarian island of Fuerteventura. Located just 100km from the coast of north Africa, it’s no wonder that it’s referred to as the island of eternal spring. It was very strange to be strolling around in shorts and t-shirts, sipping cool drinks and slapping…
The Camino de Santiago was a very different experience in the Middle Ages, writes Greg Daly A biography of Red Hugh O’Donnell, written a few years after the Gaelic lord’s death in 1602, made much of how the earl had visited Breóghan’s Tower in A Coruña on his arrival in Spain in the aftermath of…
Pope Francis approved a new set of laws concerning the structure and governance of Vatican City State in an effort to simplify the many offices and activities of the world’s smallest nation and to boost oversight, transparency and budgetary controls. The measures were issued ‘motu proprio’, on the Pope’s own accord. The Pope said the…
Leading child protection campaigner Marie Collins has said it would be “shortsighted” of the Vatican not to invite Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin to a global safeguarding bishops’ summit to be hosted in Rome in February. Fr Hans Zollner SJ, who Pope Francis has asked to coordinate the gathering, has said that while the summit’s planning…
Colm Fitzpatrick
Greg Daly
Maria Byrne