The bishops’ conference of Belarus accused state media of stoking anti-Catholic feeling, after an official newspaper equated priests with Nazis in a front-page cartoon. “This publication inflicts moral damage on Christians of all denominations – it deliberately, maliciously distorts the truth,” the conference said September 7. “A caricature in which the cross turns into a…
The Church in Ireland’s development agency Trócaire has called on the Government to uphold Ireland’s reputation as a leader in international development by increasing the amount committed in the forthcoming budget. The charity made the call as a global report warned that 142 million people will face severe food shortages in 2021. Trócaire is also…
Ireland has some of the best dark sky reserves around and the longer nights beckon us out to appreciate them, writes Jason Osborne Always having had a fascination with space and all things celestial, I’ve been strangely looking forward to the encroaching darkness of autumn and winter this year, and the possibilities it presents for…
The world is a messy place and often the only realistic choices are between bad and even worse writes David Quinn Everyone remembers where they were on September 11, 2001. I was still the editor of this newspaper and had gone into a pub for lunch with some other staff and on the television set…
Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass, Revised New Edition by Nicola Gordon Bowe, David Caron and others (Irish Academic Press, €35.00/£29.99) Patrick Claffey It is 30 years since the original publication of this handsome work, the definitive guide to Irish stained glass from 1900 to the present day. The revision, the work of several hands, is to…
A new bishop of Wuhan, China, was ordained September 8 under the terms of the Vatican-China agreement, a Vatican spokesman has confirmed. Bishop Francis Cui Qingqi, 57, is the sixth bishop to be consecrated in China since the Holy See signed a provisional agreement with the Chinese government in September 2018. According to Vatican spokesman…
Faith and Fury: The Evangelical Campaign in Dingle and West Kerry 1825-45 by Bryan MacMahon (Wordwell, €20.00/£18.99) In these ecumenical times it is difficult to make sense of the distrust and hostility which existed between Catholics and Protestants in west Kerry between 1825 and 1845. Locally these years became known as the period of the second…
Bishop John Shelby Spong, a best-selling author and Episcopal bishop known for his liberal theology has died. He was 90. He made headlines as the bishop of the Diocese of Newark, where he served for more than two decades when in 1989 he ordained the first openly gay minister. He was part of a movement…
Letter from Poland Sunday saw the beatification of two blesseds with very different, but equally holy, missions in the Church in Poland. Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, declared the ‘Iron primate’, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Mother Elzbieta Róza Czacka blessed at Mass and a service September 12, at…
A Catholic bishops’ commission said that it is a “pity” that the “key position” of EU religious freedom envoy is now vacant. The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) congratulated the outgoing envoy Christos Stylianides September 8 on his next role as head of Greece’s new climate crisis ministry. But the…
David Quinn