For my fortieth anniversary of priesthood I made a little bucket list of things I hoped to do during the year. Many were decidedly pleasurable, but I wanted a few challenges as well. One was making the traditional Three Day Pilgrimage to Lough Derg. Lough Derg — St Patrick’s Purgatory on Station Island in Co.…
As the Presentation Sisters mark the 250th anniversary of their founding, their story, rooted in the life, vision, and courage of Nano Nagle, feels strikingly contemporary. For the congregation worldwide, this anniversary is not only a milestone but an opportunity to honour and commemorate the past and to reflect on the remarkable evolution of a…
Since the election of Pope Leo people have asked me what I think of the new pope. This is such a modern question. Before the invention of the camera no one knew what the pope looked like, but all Catholics knew they had to be in communion with Rome to be truly Catholic. The martyrs…
Irish society is “living off the fumes of the past” and can no longer assume a Christian worldview, Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan has warned, saying this generation of Catholics must take responsibility for bringing the faith to their contemporaries. In his homily at the opening Mass for Ave Maria University’s new semester-abroad programme at Mount Melleray…
You know the story, three times, on the shore of lake Galilee after the resurrection, Christ asks Peter the same question, and three times Peter answers, and three times comes the same command: feed my sheep. It’s a commission to the whole Church, handed to a single, frightened, newly-forgiven married fisherman. Two thousand years later,…
The beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen is a reminder that the Church must embrace modern media without allowing personality or popularity to eclipse the Gospel, Bishop Paul Dempsey has said. The celebrated Irish-American preacher and broadcaster was beatified today at a Mass in St Louis, Missouri, presided over by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle on behalf…
“Family love cannot replace proper public support,” said Catherine Wiley, CEO of the Catholic Grandparents Association (CGA) to The Irish Catholic, responding to a recent survey published by ALONE on the impact of rising living costs on older people. “And public support cannot replace the love, the presence and the responsibility of the family,” Ms…
My name is Anthony. I am 12 years old, and I have two brothers and two sisters. I have loved altar serving since I was five. At first, it was just my older brother and me. A few months later, our younger brother asked the priest if he could serve too. Putting on my cassock…
A Co. Louth priest, only two weeks into his new position as parish priest of Ardee, Collon and Ballapousta, died suddenly last week. Fr Mark O’Hagan’s death was announced on Friday, September 18, and was met with an outpouring of love and appreciation from those in current and past communities. The 55-year-old priest, from Coalisland,…
At a briefing from the Education Matters advocacy group in the AV Room of Leinster House last week, former mental health nurse and mother Sam Poynter maintained that the issue of gender identity policy in Irish schools must not “be brushed aside as a culture war when, in fact, it is a safeguarding issue.” Welcoming…