Parnell’s Other Island: Charles Stewart Parnell’s life and times in late Victorian Britain, by Alan F. Parkinson (Eastwood Books, €25.00 / £21.50) The title of this book echoes that of George Bernard Shaw’s 1904 play John Bull’s Other Island, but with the conceit inverted. Whereas Shaw was referring to Ireland, Parnell’s other island was…
Changing to Be Faithful: Living Tradition in a Synodal Church, by Eamonn Conway, foreword by Cardinal Mario Grech (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) This is a book written to enlighten the ordinary reader in the whole Synodal process and what it means for the Church, now and into the near future. In reading…
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday renewed his appeal for an end to the war in Ukraine, decrying recent Russian attacks that have killed noncombatants and damaged civilian infrastructure. “With a sorrowful heart,” the pontiff said Sunday, “I have followed the news of the latest violent attacks that have recently struck several cities and civilian infrastructures…
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) have won the local elections in Saxony-Anhalt while the local church has consistently warned against the burgeoning far-right party. Although the party fell short of an outright majority in the eastern state of Germany, with nearly 44% of the vote, the victory has sent shockwaves throughout Europe and is widely…
Twenty-five years after American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37am on September 11, 2001, killing 184 people, the site of the attack serves as both a place of remembrance and reflection. The crash claimed the lives of 125 people inside the Pentagon as well as the aircraft’s 53 passengers and six crew members.…
At the start of the 2026/2027 academic year in Cameroon, the Apostolic Nuncio to Cameroon, Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt, warns against the forced boycott of schools in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions. For the past ten years, the North West and South West regions have been reeling from a separatist crisis, with the boycott of schools a…
The European bishops’ conference is warning authorities of the dangers of allowing baptised individuals to erase the records of their baptisms from Church archives, with the bishops arguing that to do so would negatively affect Church freedom and internal governance. The Court of Justice of the European Union is currently hearing a case brought by…
It is fitting and right that a series of fifty-two meditations on the saints should include one on Mary, the Mother of Jesus. She is one of the saints and pre-eminent among them because of her unique role as Mother of the Saviour and as the one who shares fully in the divine life, being…
Q: In the Gospel’s account of Peter’s confession of Christ, Jesus responded with: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if Jesus would have skipped the wordplay and simply said: “Peter, I’m making you the first head of my Church.” The…
Every year I try to write an article on suicide because it is perhaps the most misunderstood of all deaths and it wreaks a unique havoc among the family and the loved ones left behind. They are left with a blizzard of ambivalent and conflicting feelings: shame (What a shameful way to die); guilt (Somehow…
Peter Costello
Fr Ronald Rolheiser