Human rights in Ireland are due to be examined again in the upcoming periodic review by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) later this year. Several organisations have now published their submissions to the Council including one by 23 NGOs from the LGBTQI+ sector, co-authored by TENI, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, LGBT Ireland…
Dear Editor, Your editorial, ‘The Synod that forgot to save the Church’ (The Irish Catholic, May 28 2026) raises important questions about the future of the Church in Ireland and the role of the Irish Synodal Pathway within it. But its emphasis is misplaced. In May 2025, when the newly elected Pope Leo XIV spoke…
The rain fell steadily on Cork on Corpus Christi Sunday, but it did little to deter the more than 5,000 people who gathered at the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne to mark the centenary of the city’s Eucharistic Procession. As the Blessed Sacrament emerged from the cathedral, the crowd followed Christ in the…
For obvious historical reasons, the vast majority of primary schools in Ireland are Catholic. The same applies to about half of secondary schools. The national school system arose out of the parochial schools. The vast majority of Irish people prior to independence in 1922 did not want to send their children to State schools because…
As a parishioner, I had always thought of the Church in terms of structures. I had thought of clergy, parishes, and committees as part of the physical buildings themselves. I had thought of churches built of stone and mortar, institutions that had stood for generations and carried the faith through centuries. But being part of…
On a press trip to Disneyland some years ago, I met a man who took his children to Mass every Sunday even though he had no faith. Why go? I asked. “Because it is good for my children,” he said. He liked Catholic values. This man came to mind as I listened to Maedbh King…
Ireland has one of the fastest-ageing populations in Europe, and most oldsters seem to be coping reasonably well – according to TCD’s Longitudinal Study on Ageing. (‘Tilda’). There are 789 Irish centenarians (including the diaspora) of whom 637 are women, and 152 men. In every study, women averagely live longer than men – more evidence…
“Love for others, and especially for the poor, is made concrete by promoting justice,” wrote the late Pope St John Paul II in Centesimus Annus. For the charity Mary’s Meals, this means feeding over three million school children across sixteen of the world’s poorest countries every day. By providing meals to children, the organisation also…
Recently, Pope Leo welcomed the new female Archbishop of Canterbury to the Vatican. The optics of the meeting bring the Catholic Church’s male-only priesthood into focus though it can never really be said to be out of focus among progressive Catholics. It is difficult to make a case for the theological rationale behind the Church’s…
As pressure grows on RTÉ to conduct an audit into bias at the station, its decades-long handling of abortion provides the most compelling argument for doing so, writes Eilís Mulroy When RTÉ Director General Kevin Bakhurst appeared before the Oireachtas Media Committee recently, he was asked a straightforward question: would he support an audit examining…
David Quinn
Martina Purdy
Mary Kenny
Eilis Mulroy