I have found the need this Lent to change things up a bit. I approached Ash Wednesday and the coming weeks with a sense of dread. I usually go off coffee and various other things. This year I just found myself wondering what I was doing and why. I have been particularly busy recently and have…
Catholic justice and peace commissions have called for greater attention to social justice across the EU, urging political leaders to take steps to curb food waste, arms exports and multinational abuses. The Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions said a “new and comprehensive European regional development policy” was needed to better serve the common…
Fr Aidan Troy, a priest who came to prominence shielding local schoolgirls from loyalist mobs in Belfast, has said families are terrified by conflicts between police and protesters in Paris, and that dialogue is the only way of ending the violence. Famous for his role in the Holy Cross Ardoyne protests in 2001, Passionist Fr…
A prominent Irish-American cardinal has used St Patrick’s Day to hit out at anti-immigrant rhetoric, and called on Catholics to look beyond stereotypes to see people as they truly are. “In the 1870s, the code images for Irish people were drunken apes,” Cardinal Joe Tobin wrote on Twitter. “The same sort of calumny is used…
St Pio represents the quiet but courageous mission of Christians across the world, writes Colm Fitzpatrick Oftentimes, religious movies tend to focus on the incredible or miraculous events of an occasion or person, resulting in piety overkill – but one Catholic priest has decided to present the life of a renowned saint in a…
The Church in Germany is at a point where serious debate – including on priestly celibacy and the role of women – and openness to doing things in a new way must encouraged, said the president of the German bishops’ conference. “Shakeups demand special proceedings,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx said at the end of the bishops’…
The headlines from a Gallup Poll about the growing number of US Catholics who have thought about leaving the Church because of the clergy abuse crisis did not faze one researcher of Catholic data too much. “There is a substantial difference between considering leaving and leaving. It is also the case among those who do…
Ireland’s bishop tasked with dealing with European matters says that people are “hoping and praying” that developments with Brexit serve the common good. Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Bishop Noel Treanor of Down and Connor said that various Church initiatives show how much concern there is around this issue. “On the basis of the initiatives…
Rosary Crusades in Latin America organised by a famous Irish-born priest were funded by the CIA as part of a campaign against communism, according to a documentary to be shown on RTÉ tonight. Guns and Rosaries tells the story of how Fr Patrick Peyton, the US-based ‘Rosary priest’ from Attymass, Co. Mayo, who after recovering…
Making their Mark: Irish Painter-Etchers 1880-1930 an exhibition curated by Anne Hodge (NGI) and Dr Angela Griffith (TCD) National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square, Dublin – runs to 30 June 2019. Admission free. A current exhibition at the NGI explores an almost forgotten aspect of modern Irish art, the activities of a small but influential…
Bairbre Cahill
Greg Daly
Colm Fitzpatrick
Peter Costello