While Pope Leo XIV visits Africa for the first time as pontiff this week, Catholics and others across the continent watch with interest for what it reveals about the pope’s agenda and priorities for their region. One of those watching is Bishop John Niyiring of Kano, Nigeria, a fellow Augustinian and longtime friend of the…
This is a subject that I have bounced around my brain for a long time and I mean, a really long time. Throughout your life it takes on many different meanings. When you’re a child, being a man is mostly defined by your father, someone who for most of us, the ones that are privileged…
“People get a great sense of belonging,” a Redemptorist priest told The Irish Catholic, as a triduum marking the 300th anniversary of St Gerard Majella drew strong crowds in Dundalk this week. Fr Brendan Callanan CSsR said the celebrations, held to mark the saint’s birth in 1726, reflected a devotion that has endured locally for…
The religious output of mainstream media channels is patchy – no specifically religious programmes at all in some cases, with significant input in others. BBC continues to impress with its commitment to their long-running pilgrimage-themed series. The latest version came to an end last week. Pilgrimage: The Road to Holy Island (BBC Two, Tuesday, with…
George Stevens directed The Greatest Story Ever Told just over sixty years ago. He said he was more interested in being reverential than buying into a modish revisionism in the film. This seemed reassuring, but his 4-hour 20-minute epic proved wearisome to many. Max von Sydow was a suitably subdued Jesus but the film was…
President Donald Trump delivered an extraordinary broadside against Pope Leo XIV on Sunday night, saying he didn’t think the US-born global leader of the Catholic Church is “doing a very good job” and that “he’s a very liberal person,” while also suggesting the pontiff should “stop catering to the Radical Left.” Flying back to Washington…
As a ceasefire between the United States and Iran tentatively remains in place, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has sparked concerns from Catholic moral theologians about the safety of civilian populations if fighting resumes. Trump announced a ceasefire agreement on April 7, hours after threatening the annihilation of the “whole civilisation” of Iran if the country…
Dear Liam, Some letters are easier to write than others. This one is not. Not because there is too little to say, but because there is so much. How do you begin to write about someone who has been a priest, composer, companion and dear friend for so many years? How do you find words…
The Lord has risen indeed! Luke 24:13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, Luke 24:14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. Luke 24:15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and…
After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace, by Robert Polito (W.W. Norton, £15.00 / €29.99) Bob Dylan has reinvented himself more often than any artist inside or outside music. Morphing from the folk-rock avatar of the sixties counterculture to a born-again Christian in the late seventies, he went from singing anti-religious anthems like ‘With…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone