The number of Catholics worldwide increased by almost 16 million in a year to 1.33 billion, according to statistics highlighted by the Vatican around the 2020 World Mission Sunday. The figures, shared by the Fides News Service, showed that there were 15,716,000 more Catholics at the end of 2018 – the most recent year where numbers are…
Border communities insist that a deal between Britain and the EU is vital for the peace process, reports Chai Brady, Ruadhán Jones and Jason Osborne The coronavirus pandemic has dominated domestic and international news for most of 2020 which has led to the overshadowing of other current events but Brexit still looms large in the…
Catholics in the North wait almost twice as long as Protestants for housing according to government statistics. Out of 35,750 people on the housing list by the end of June 2020, 36.4% identified as Catholic while 38.2% identified as Protestant. The figures, discovered by the Belfast Telegraph after a Freedom of Information request, found that…
San Francisco’s archbishop plans to conduct an exorcism on October 17 at the site of a now-toppled statue of St Junipero Serra at St Rafael Mission Church in San Rafael. Just the saint’s feet are left after the statue on church property was vandalised and desecrated on October 12 by what Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone described…
Despite being told that there is no such thing as truth, students are told to accept theories that are younger than they are without question, writes Ronan Doheny While University College Dublin’s marketing campaign to attract new students uses the slogan ‘Think Bigger’, my experiences in UCD and Trinity College Dublin have found the opposite…
Young people are being “stigmatised” for the spread of Covid-19 despite many “stepping up” and being generous and self-sacrificial according to the Primate of All-Ireland Archbishop Eamon Martin. Speaking at Mass for the dedication of studies at the Catholic Chaplaincy, Queen’s University Belfast Archbishop Eamon said many young people have shown “great resilience” throughout the pandemic and…
The Catholic Church in Switzerland has backed legislation that would penalise companies that damage the environment or abuse human rights. “This initiative focuses on human rights violations, whose primary victims are the poorest and most vulnerable,” the Church said in a joint appeal with protestant leaders. “It makes an urgent appeal, to both our government…
House of Cards, a novel by Alice Curtayne (Cluny Classics, £14.50/$17.95) We often hear it said that before the rise of modern feminism, marriage was seen as the summum bonum of a woman’s ambitions. In Alice Curtayne’s compelling novel, first published in 1939, an Irishwoman makes it indignantly clear that this was not the case in…
Ruadhán Jones shares ideas for celebrating the unofficial triduum of Hallowe’en, All Saints and All Souls Hallowe’en as it is celebrated today comprises a mishmash of different cultural traditions, some pagan – mostly Celtic – and some Christian. Even the origins of the celebration are somewhat controversial, with Neo-paganists attempting to ‘reclaim’ it from its…
Shoppers in one of the largest supermarkets in Ballymena, Co. Antrim were stunned when the words “F*** the Pope” were announced over the tannoy. It is understood that a member of the public, a male youth, gained access to an unattended speaker at a Tesco store and shouted out the sectarian slur. According to a…
Chai Brady
Mary Kenny
Ruadhán Jones