Dear Editor, Over the past few years, dioceses around the country have been debating how to balance the demand for funerals with the diminishing numbers of priests. Before this issue can be addressed, there is however a more fundamental conversation that needs to be had: the question of what a Requiem Mass is and what…
Jem Sullivan 1 Sm 3:3b-10, 19 Ps 40:2, 4, 7-8, 8-9, 10 1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20 Jn 1:35-42 The new year is a good time to begin anew in our spiritual lives. Along with resolutions to improve our health, habits and relationships, a renewed commitment to prayer gives direction to our inmost longings for…
Freedom, in many of its manifestations, is under threat around the world, whether it be freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or freedom of thought and conscience. We know only too well of the many instances in 2023 where governments shut down journalists and media and in some cases actually targeted journalists and campaigning citizens…
Priests have been encouraged to hold the line on improper requests at funerals, writes Chai Brady Living in a community in which every neighbour knows who to watch out for in order to steer clear of drug dealing and violence is an unfortunate reality. To allow a church to be used to idolise a person…
Leitrim town gives thanks after tornado During Mass in St Joseph’s Church, Leitrim Village, the site of a tornado last year, Fr Séamus O’Rourke CC Carrick-on-Shannon gave thanks to the Lord for protecting the lives of those in the town. “Tonight, here in Leitrim village, we come together in thanksgiving for the Lord saving the…
Fr John Harris OP The movie, Silence, tells the story of how in the 17th Century two Portuguese Jesuit priests travelled to Japan in an attempt to locate their mentor whom it was rumoured had committed apostasy. Their task was to locate him to discover if this was true and if so bring him back…
Erbil (KNA) Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako has criticised the failure of Iraqi politics to protect the country’s citizens and in particular its Christian minority. “The state of instability and lack of justice has once again fuelled the flow of migration,” lamented the patriarch of Iraq’s numerically largest church, the Chaldean Church, in an article published…
Munich (KNA) According to Aid to the Church in Need, at least 132 Catholic priests and religious were killed, abducted or imprisoned in 2023. This is according to the international aid organisation’s own research published in Munich on Wednesday. That is eight more people than in the previous year. As it is difficult to obtain reliable…
ROME: A Catholic cleric around 60 gets a major Vatican gig, where, among other things, he issues controversial pronouncements on sexual morality. At a certain point, it’s revealed that years before, he wrote a book in which he dealt with sexually explicit topics such as orgasms, creating scandal among sensitive souls who believe it’s inappropriate…
Aontú Leader and TD Peadar Tóibín has today called on the government to take seriously the threat to life that exists in the trafficking of migrants into Ireland. His comments come in the aftermath of the discovery of 14 migrants who were found in a container in Rosslare Harbour in Wexford yesterday evening. Expressing gratitude…
Chai Brady
John L. Allen Jr.
Brandon Scott