Caroline de Sury The reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral, scheduled for December 8, will be “six months of celebration and praise,” the archbishop of Paris said in a pastoral letter. The iconic cathedral will reopen five years and 10 months after the devastating fire in April 2019. Archbishop Laurent Ulrich gave some details in his…
The Master of the Dominican Order was in Dublin on Sunday to help commemorate the eighth centenary of the arrival of the Dominican Order in Ireland.
Fr John Harris OP The old Irish saying warns us that “you’ll never miss your mother ‘til she’s buried beneath the grave”. During Lent the Church drops the Gloria from the Mass but it returns with great gusto at Easter. Last month I wrote about the ‘Silence of God’ and how this can be a…
Can you imagine leaving your six year old in a playground knowing there was a predator there waiting to groom them? Or bringing them with you to a violent over 18s film and asking them to close their eyes, hoping they might not see. Would you hand them a pack of 20 cigarettes because, well,…
Former Taoiseach John Bruton’s funeral saw a fitting send-off for a man well-known as an able and honest politician, “a man of integrity and truth,” as current Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said. However, those in attendance had their attention drawn by chief celebrant and homilist Fr Bruce Bradley, SJ, to an aspect of Mr Bruton’s character…
Justin Robinson Under my window in Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter, the men of the neighbourhood are gathering outside the cafés to sip their morning coffee, smoke too many cigarettes, scan the newspapers and talk about what’s going on. There’s much to discuss lately, but not a great deal to be done. Their shops are closed…
Deacon Greg Kandra Gn 9:8-15 Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 1 Pt 3:18-22 Mk 1:12-15 Was that it? This weekend, the first Sunday of Lent, we hear Mark’s account of Jesus going into the desert before he begins his earthly ministry. But Mark doesn’t tell us very much. He mentions Satan and angels, temptations and wild…
Gaza, so much in the news recently, is one of the world’s oldest cities, though one might not believe this from what one reads or hears about it today in the media. Gaza, which lies 50 miles or so south-south-west of Jerusalem, was in antiquity a great Philistine city and fortress, often mentioned in the…
I recently mentioned 2024 as a year for remembering the centenary of a number of composers’ births or deaths. One such is Charles Villiers Stanford who was born in Dublin’s Herbert Street on September 30, 1852 and died in London on 29 March, 1924. Ideals of Brahms Stanford’s music is akin to the romantic ideals…
Pope Francis canonised Argentina’s first female saint, María Antonia of St Joseph — known affectionately in the Pope’s home country as ‘Mama Antula’ — in a Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on Sunday. Argentina’s President Javier Milei sat in the front row to the Pope’s right during the canonisation on February 11 and embraced the…
Wendy Grace
Peter Costello