The revelation that children in State care are being targeted by sexual predators due to a lack of national policy and training on exploitation “wasn’t a surprise,” according to an organisation tackling child trafficking in Ireland. The Protecting Against Predators study interviewed 21 staff from 14 agencies working with vulnerable children and found that trafficking…
Gretchen Crowe It’s easy for Catholics to take the rosary for granted. We tend to purchase them as souvenirs, or carry them around with us, or even wear them – but we forget the immense power that they have when we actually pray them. And that’s really too bad, because a devotion to the rosary…
The Irish community in Paris has joined in prayers for peace following days of protest across France after the shooting dead of a 17-year-old by a police officer. Nahel M., who is Algerian and of Moroccan descent, was shot during a traffic stop in Nanterre, a Paris suburb on June 27. Violent protests broke out…
Sofia Zate On June 30, Sr Mary Tighe celebrated her oak jubilee, ringing in 80 years in the Congregation of the Sisters of St John of God. She also celebrated her 100th birthday on the 14th of the same month. When I spoke to Sr Mary, she sounded grateful as she recalled her, not one…
Judith Sudilovsky A local Israeli reporter went undercover as a priest and was spat at several times while walking the streets of Jerusalem, Haaretz, the Israeli daily, reported. Haaretz underlined that at a time when attacks on Christians in Jerusalem are rapidly increasing, police are reluctant to track down the perpetrators. Channel 13’s Yossi Eli…
Farm deaths leave ‘cavern of darkness’ Farm deaths and accidents leave a “cavern of darkness” for those they affect, Bishop Denis Nulty said during an ecumenical prayer gathering on June 25. Accidents cause “devastation to families and farms”, the bishop of Kildare and Leighlin said at the 10th ecumenical remembrance service in Abbeyleix. “The more…
A number of years ago I was giving a retreat to priests in the USA. Most of them had been born in Ireland and had spent all of their priesthood in various dioceses. They are what used to be known in the Church in America as FBIs (foreign born Irish), to distinguish them from those…
Papal peace envoy journeys to Moscow Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi met with a Kremlin foreign policy adviser during the peace mission he is making to Moscow on Pope Francis’s behalf. Archbishop Giovanni d’Aniello, the apostolic nuncio to Russia, told reporters June 29 that the mission Pope Francis entrusted to Cardinal Zuppi “is to identify and…
Catholics in Honduras prayed for the victims of a horrific massacre in a women’s prison – an attack underscoring the power of the country’s criminal gangs and their control over correctional facilities. Many Catholic clergy expressed outrage while demanding an overhaul of the country’s prison system. “Tragedy repeats itself,” tweeted Bishop Ángel Garachana of San…
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he will speak with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega about releasing a jailed Nicaraguan bishop currently serving a 26-year prison sentence. Speaking to reporters in Rome June 22, a day after meeting with Pope Francis, the Brazilian president, commonly referred to as Lula, said there is “no reason…