Irish archbishop in South Africa Liam Slattery OFM tells of how the ‘load shedding’ practice is causing economic havoc, hears Jason Osborne In one way or another, all of us have a newfound awareness of the precariousness of our modern dependence on electricity and the fuels it’s generated by. This consciousness is largely as a…
At least 94 people reportedly have died in a series of deadly attacks on Christian communities throughout Holy Week in Benue state in north-central Nigeria, an ominous sign of escalating violence blamed on Muslim militias in the country’s Middle Belt region. On April 2, armed men reportedly stormed a Palm Sunday service at a Pentecostal church in…
In the musical Les Miserables, there’s a particularly haunting song, sung by a dying woman (Fontine) who has been crushed by virtually every unfairness that life can deal a person. Abandoned by her husband, sexually harassed by her employer, caught in abject poverty, physically ill and dying, even as her main anxiety is about what…
I’m frequently uneasy about the whole Irish-American thing, but I do realise how welcoming the USA has been to the Irish, and how well they effectively protected us during World War II. The crucial US contribution to the Irish peace process must be acknowledged also. I wasn’t that interested in following the extensive coverage of…
Jem Sullivan April 23, 2023 Third Sunday of Easter Acts 2:14, 22-33 Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11 I Peter 1:17-21 Luke 24:13-35 Think of a memorable meal you had recently, or in the past. Perhaps it was a casual family gathering or a formal occasion. It may have been in a secluded place…
The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has confiscated a cloistered monastery and arrested 20 people for activities related to Holy Week in Nicaragua. The Trappist sisters of Nicaragua, who left the country in February after 22 years of service, reported April 11 that the government verbally informed the…
A top-heavy structure does not listen to the people, and the people increasingly do not listen to the Church, writes Dr Phyllis Zagano Twenty centuries of stony sleep? Not really. There are times in the history of the Church when justice was the order of the day, when women were well regarded, and when saying…
Finding God in the Mess: Meditations for Mindful Living, by Brendan McManus SJ and Jim Deeds (Messenger Publications, €11.95 / £10.95) This is a new edition of a book that proved a great success when it was a first issued in 2018, indeed it was awarded two media awards. Though it then had many readers,…
An AI study of conflict in the North shows religion is not to blame, writes Ruadhán Jones Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be seen as a threat to humanity, but a new study shows how it can be used to tackle real-life conflicts. Conducted by the Cambridge University’s interfaith Woolf Institute, a study of conflict in…
An elderly man, Harold Fry (Jim Broadbent), receives a letter from an old friend, Queenie, one morning to say she’s in a hospice. His immediate impulse is to write a return letter of sympathy to her but after a conversation with a girl in a garage shop whose aunt’s cancer was halted by the support…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Brendan O’Regan
Peter Costello
Ruadhán Jones
Aubrey Malone