In a new interview, Pope Francis said he is in good health and denied any plans to resign, saying he has several foreign trips planned for this year, including a summer stop in Polynesia and a potential return trip to Argentina. Speaking of his health, Francis in the interview jested that “I’m still alive” despite…
Fr Patrick Briscoe OP In August 2022, when Transformers star Shia LaBeouf revealed during a conversation with Bishop Robert Barron that he had experienced a conversion and begun to attend Mass, I wrote that LaBeouf seemed to me to have undergone a genuine change of heart. He spoke regretfully of the pain and harm he…
Michael Healy 1873-1941: A Túr Gloine’s Stained Glass Pioneer, by David Caron (Four Courts Press, €55.00 / £50.00) Back in October 1906, Robert Elliot in his pioneering book Art and Ireland lamented that so many churches in Ireland seemed to prefer to fill the windows of their churches with stained glass imported ready made from…
Graiguecullen’s parish church was packed for the feast of Jesus’ Baptism, as children baptised in 2023 received a blessing from Fr John Dunphy PP. The blessing was given to the babies and their parents as they continue their faith journey together. The parish’s baptismal ministers gifted each family with a prayer card, a little bottle…
The Church in Ireland needs a whole “mindset shift” over lay ministry, as dioceses and parishes seek to embed a synodal approach to local leadership, a leading theologian has said. Irish dioceses have a “brilliant opportunity” to initiate a more “inclusive” model of leadership, according to the Dean of Theology at St Patrick’s Pontifical University,…
Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese has announced the completion of the script for a new movie, A Life of Jesus. Mr Scorsese co-wrote the screenplay with critic and filmmaker Kent Jones, based on Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name, and plans to to shoot it later this year. The American director said he envisions…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: I always thought the end of the Christmas season came with Epiphany and the arrival of the Magi. A priest recently said the season doesn’t end until a week later with the Baptism of the Lord. What has the Baptism of the adult Jesus got to do with Bethlehem? If…
Polarisation in Poland has reached new heights as it enters the new year, following the election of a left-leaning government more in line with those “European values” we frequently hear about from the continent’s top bureaucrats than the nation’s previous right-wing PiS (Law and Justice) administration. At the top of the new government’s agenda, headed…
The German Child Protection Association has criticised Pope Francis for his comments on the beating of children. “There is no justification for beating children, not even a papal one,” said Daniel Grein, Federal Director of the Child Protection Association, in Berlin. “Anyone who physically abuses a child is doing the wrong thing. This also includes…
A Nation is Born: Ireland in Colour 1923-1938, edited by Michael B. Barry and John O’Byrne (Gill books, €26.99 / £25.99) The title of this book is a complete misnomer. But then that is the sort of thing that happens when a complex subject is popularised for Christmastime consumption. Ireland in 1923 did not see…
Peter Costello
Ruadhán Jones