To walk in the footsteps of Jesus is quite simply breath-taking, writes Elaine Noonan A trip to the Holy Land had been on my mind for some time. I had hoped to be able to go during the year of my 40th birthday, but then lockdowns happened and that birthday came and went. So when…
Lorene Hanley Duquin Today, parishioners are expected to feel a true sense of ownership in their parish. That means looking at your parish as more than just a place where you go to Mass. A parish can be a sacred place where the human and the divine meet, where people of all ages grow in…
Malawi is still reeling from the consequences of Cyclone Freddy that hit the southeastern African country on March 12. The storm system caused flooding and mudslides that have resulted in the deaths of about 500 people, according to Malawi’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA) earlier this month. More than 490,000 people have been displaced…
As faith communities we need to support those who feel afraid to express their faith writes Fr Barry Matthews As an eight-year-old celebrating pretend Mass in the sitting room of our Dundalk home I understood something of the importance of the role God played in my life. The innocence of childhood mixed with the innate…
Renowned performer Andrea Bocelli invites us to join him on a unique pilgrimage, writes Andrew Petiprin In recent years, the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli has enjoyed international success while frequently offering traditional Christian songs to a mass audience. Blind since the age of 12 and experiencing significant success as a singer while only in his…
Mass for Easter Sunday will be broadcast live at 10am on RTÉ One television from the Swiss city of Fribourg. The Mass will be celebrated by Bishop Charles Morerod OP in the Church of St Peter, with commentary and translation by Michael Kelly, Editor of The Irish Catholic. The Mass will begin at x. The…
Letter from Rome Justin McLellan The people behind chatbots are asking questions of priests and ethicists rather than turning to their artificially intelligent creations. They want to know: What is consciousness? What is the nature of humanity? What is the purpose of life? According to Fr Phillip Larrey, dean of the philosophy department at the…
A synod of German bishops overwhelmingly approved Church blessings of same-sex unions and unions between divorced and remarried Catholics, but the move has faced harsh criticism from some members of the Catholic hierarchy who have accused the German bishops of abandoning the Faith. German Cardinal Gerhard Müller and American Cardinal Raymond Burke rebuked the German…
Actor Rainn Wilson, best known for his role as Dwight in the hit TV series The Office, recently took to Twitter to criticise Hollywood’s “anti-Christian bias”. Wilson’s tweet responded to a depiction of a cannibalistic Christian preacher in a new episode of HBO’s popular zombie series The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal. “I do…
There has been a sharp decline in the number of people who are married in the North of Ireland from 61% in 1971 to 46% in 2021, according to the latest statistics. The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency released the data this week. It found that 693,000 adults (aged 16 and over) are married…