Padre Pio relics to visit Down and Connor The Diocese of Down and Connor will bring the relics of St Padre Pio to the diocese from November 6-11 to mark 20 years since he was declared a saint. Pope St John Paul II canonised Padre Pio in 2002, drawing crowds of an estimated 300,000 to…
Another United Nations Climate Conference is upon us. COP27 will take place in Egypt from November 6-18 as global leaders gather to discuss where we stand as a global community in relation to climate change. The outlook is bleak to those who are paying attention: last week the World Meteorological Organisation confirmed global levels of…
Editor’s Comment Church history is always one of ups and downs, peaks and troughs. The last 2,000 years have been witness to some of the greatest people in human history doing great things in the name of Christianity. The same period has also witnessed immense human wickedness from people who profess to be followers of…
Maybe we’ll look back on 2022 as the year of women in films. A documentary on Mother Teresa was recently released, as was one about Lyra McKee, the investigative journalist who was murdered by dissident republicans on Holy Thursday in 2019. Also a documentary on the poet and novelist Doireann Ní Ghriofa and the film…
I’m conflicted about the Kerry priest controversy. Certainly much of the media coverage was ill-informed and unnecessarily confrontational. The basics of what Fr Seán Sheehy said at those Masses in Listowell was orthodox Catholic teaching, which is by far the main thing, but the message could have been delivered in a more appealing, compassionate, sensitive…
by Christopher Moriarty Nature praising God: Towards a theology of the natural world by Dermot A. Lane (Messenger Publications, €14.95/£12.99) The word ‘nature’ in the title of this remarkable book refers to the universe with one important exception. The exception is humanity and the two are generally posed as being in opposition to each other.…
Dear Editor, As Christians around the world start thinking about setting up nativity scenes for Christmas, the ox and the donkey regular fixtures around the manger are latter-day inventions nowhere to be seen in the gospels. The Vatican itself has included animals in the nativity scenes it sets up each year in St Peter’s Square.…
During this month of November, we will have memorial Masses in many parishes across Ireland. In my experience these can be very moving occasions as the name of each person who died during the last year is called out and a family member comes forward to light a candle in memory of a parent, a…
What’s the point of Christmas without Christian symbols like a crib, Dublin-based priests have asked after the cancelling of the traditional nativity scene outside the Lord Mayor’s residence in Dublin. The live animal crib, which has been a fixture outside the Mansion House since 1995, will be replaced by a “winter wonderland” in plans announced…
A new prayer campaign hopes to encourage people to come forward and provide fresh information about the so-called ‘disappeared’ – people who were abducted, killed and secretly buried by paramilitaries in the North. Fr Joe Gormley of Derry Diocese, who works closely with the families who are desperate to give their loved ones the dignity…
Ruadhán Jones
Michael Kelly
Aubrey Malone
Brendan O’Regan