Belfast’s youngest parish priest could not resist the road to Rome on May 8. Fr Conor McGrath had just marked his 38th birthday. There are only a handful of priests his age in Down and Connor where he also serves as vocations director. In the years to come, would he get another chance to see…
St Leo I (Leo the Great) Papacy: 440–461 Canonised Saint | Doctor of the Church The first pope to bear the title “the Great”, Leo I was a theological giant and a steady leader in times of crisis. He fiercely defended orthodox Christology during the Council of Chalcedon, helped define the doctrine of Christ’s two…
It is with the astonished joy of the resurrection in the season of Easter that we welcome a new Pope. We continue to mourn the loss of Pope Francis whose extensive ministry through presence, preaching, teaching and writing can now be absorbed and take on new light. Just as the words of Christ we read…
Dr Massimo Faggioli The 2025 conclave, which was quickly resolved on the second day, elected an American Augustinian to the papacy, Robert Francis Prevost, who chose Leo XIV as his name. In the days preceding the conclave, two other Americans had been seen in the Vatican, with different relationships with the Church, but both interested…
Last weekend, in the small, picturesque seaside town of St Agnes in Cornwall, a plaque was unveiled to the hundreds of thousands of unmarried mothers in England and Wales who had been subjected, in the past, to forced adoptions. The plaque is situated at Rosemundy, which was once a mother-and-baby home in the West of…
I was thinking about how I’d start this article when my mind turned to the Camogie ‘skorts vs shorts’ debate. I have been marvelling mentally at the capacity of so many politicians to get worked up about such a trivial matter. And then a text to my phone from Gena Heraty in Haiti. Gena, from Westport, has spent most…
It is extremely early, impossible in fact, to make any real predictions about the direction in which our new pope, Leo XIV, will lead the Church, but we are all allowed to say what our first impressions are, and mine are that he seems like a calm, gentle, intelligent and deeply prayerful man. This last…
CS Lewis, one of the great Christian apologists, didn’t become a Christian without resistance and struggle. He grew into adulthood nursing a certain scepticism and agnosticism. He wasn’t drawn naturally to faith or to Christ. But he was always radically honest in trying to listen to the deepest voices inside and at a certain point…
Fr Eamonn Conway Pope Leo intends, albeit in his own way and according to his own style, to press forward with the same priorities that Pope Francis held. Pope Leo has called for a renewal of everyone’s commitment to Vatican II and in his first homily to the cardinals who elected him has described as…
Russell Shaw Cardinal Robert Prevost has selected the name Pope Leo XIV, an apparent nod to Pope Leo XIII, who deserves to be called the founding father of Catholic social doctrine in modern times, with his encyclical Rerum Novarum as its foundational document. The Catholic Church has taught social morality for many centuries. This body of teaching includes…
Martina Purdy
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Fr Ronald Rolheiser