Month: July 2022

Pope’s Canada trip: Beginning and ending with ‘sorry’

Pope Francis said all the speeches he has prepared for his trip to Canada “begin and end” with asking forgiveness. In an early July interview, he acknowledged the “cruel way” the Catholic Church collaborated with the Canadian government in “colonisation” by uprooting Indigenous children from their families, cultures and spiritualities and forcing them to attend…

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Welcomed from persecuted China to Ireland

Liam Fitzpatrick Personal Profile Fr Yanbo Chen felt lost. Working in a job he didn’t enjoy, he turned to his faith and a few Catholic monks to provide him with guidance. The monks presented Fr Chen with a piece of paper that changed his life. “I kneeled down to prayer, and I pulled a little…

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Hopkins Summer School

34th International Hopkins Festival July 22-28 2022 Newbridge College Theatre, Newbridge, Co. Kildare The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Summer School, which has been called “a bright gem in the literary world”, by Patrick Samway SJ, the American literary scholar and teacher, begins tomorrow (Friday July 22), and closes next week on 28. The details of all…

The temptations of the good person

Many of us are familiar with an often-quoted line from T.S. Eliot: “The last temptation is the greatest treason; to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” This, he suggests, is the temptation of the good person. What’s the temptation? In John’s Gospel, Jesus asks his listeners this question, “How can you believe who…

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No questions and no hunger

The Capuchin Day Centre has seen a rise in working families accessing the service, Liam Fitzpatrick learns A man stands at the door to the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin, welcoming visitors, holding a surgical mask and asking no questions. Inside the Centre, Bro. Kevin Crowley offers smiles and handshakes – and still no questions.…

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