The Notebook Fr Vincent Sherlock One of my favourite childhood memories is going to Sligo with my parents on Christmas Eve. We’d go in the afternoon, spend a few hours in Sligo and call to Cloonamahon (then a Passionist Monastery near Collooney) or maybe to the Friary or Cathedral in Sligo and go to…
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Leo O’Reilly of Kilmore on health grounds. While Dr O’Reilly was not due to retire until next year, the Vatican announced in a communique on December 31 that the retirement had been brought forward. A statement from the Catholic Communications Office said Bishop O’Reilly tendered his resignation…
State Papers: Echoes of the past from the archives Many people have wondered over the years about the ‘promise to pay’ of the Irish Republic in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. Great sums of money were collected but never really accounted for. Mystery surrounds these funds. One of the files deals with…
Tickling the brain Why is the sky blue? Why don’t penguins’ feet freeze? These are the types of questions Ireland’s brightest young science students will answer through their exhibits which will go on display at the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition running from January 9 -12. A highlight on the secondary school calendar, the…
Pat O’Kelly While there is always an air of expectancy about January it can be a time to reminisce about the previous 12 months and recall some of the ‘highs’ as well as the ‘lows’. Deaths among the country’s musical fraternity included the multi-faceted composer/pianist/professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin and friends Máire Larchet and Margaret…
Dear Editor, It was warming to know that you wrote about the perils of excessive drinking, especially at Christmas in your paper (IC 20/12/18). Our society doesn’t take drinking seriously enough which has caused more deaths and destroyed more families than one could imagine. The figures you cited which say that 74% of people drinking…
Hannah Brockhaus When praying, remember the words of Jesus when he taught the ‘Our Father,’ Pope Francis said today, meeting God as his beloved child and speaking from the heart. Some think that to pray is to use many words. “I too think of many Christians who believe that praying is to talk to…
January The new year began with news that Mayo-born Fr Patrick Peyton – who died in 1992 – began his first steps towards formal sainthood, with Pope Francis having acknowledged his ‘heroic virtues’, decreeing him ‘venerable’. Known as the ‘Rosary Priest’, Fr Peyton organised massive Rosary rallies in cities around the world, enlisting the help…
The ‘progress’ of Irish society has come at a high price, writes John Waters There’s an essence of Ireland that does not reside in landscape, or institutions, that rarely manifests nowadays in formal culture. It’s to be encountered chiefly in fleeting encounters with people – benign explosions of mirth and knowingness that leave you changed…
A feature of the temperance movement from the beginning was inclusiveness, writes Finola Kennedy “Padre, is that you?…Is there a God?” Reassurance from the chaplain to the dying young officer prompted the reply, “You must be right, but it’s hard isn’t it, to understand?” It must have been hard too for the 32 Irish…