Chai Brady President Michael D. Higgins has expressed the hope that Pope Francis will travel North of the border during an expected visit to Ireland next summer. In a 15-minute meeting with Mr Higgins in Rome the Pope said the prospect of a visit to the North was a possibility. Mr Higgins told the Pontiff…
Ireland will provide €6m to two struggling African countries that have been ravaged by war and chronic poverty. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR) are among the poorest countries in the world, with food insecurity and malnutrition affecting 6.4 million people. Each country will receive €3m from Ireland through…
We are challenged to build an economy that is designed to serve people, says President Michael D. Higgins At the Vatican, I had the great honour of meeting with a man who exemplifies in the most striking and moving of manners the extraordinary importance of the spiritual as a powerful wellspring of global ethics, coupled…
Staff reporter A social media campaign by the Diocese of Kildare & Leighlin asking for suggestions for the 2017 parish Christmas gift has been an “outstanding success”. Bishop Denis Nulty, who made the appeal in a video, told The Irish Catholic it was the first time the diocese had tried “this way of engaging with…
Pope Francis has announced he will create five new cardinals next month, one of whom has dedicated his appointment to slain archbishop, Blessed Oscar Romero. Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez from El Salvador said he was surprised when he received a call from the Vatican at 5am on May 21, and expressed his “profound gratitude” to…
Ordinary Catholics support Pope Francis, the head of Pope’s ‘kitchen cabinet’ has said, criticising Cardinal Raymond Burke, who in 2014 Pope Francis removed from his position as head of the Apostolic Signura, as “a disappointed man” who “wanted power and lost it”. Describing opponents of the Holy Father as “proud” and “arrogant”, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez…
Over 90% of British women want a ban on sex-selective abortion, with 70% wanting the time limits for abortion to be lowered and 59% wanting the limit lowered to 16 weeks or lower, according to a new poll of 2,008 adults conducted by ComRes. Although abortion is theoretically illegal in British law, doctors are exempt…
“Justice must be allowed to run its course,” in connection with child abuse charges levelled in Australia at Cardinal George Pell, who has headed the Vatican’s Secretariat of the Economy since 2014, according to Sydney’s Archbishop Anthony Fisher. Maintaining that the cardinal is entitled to the presumption of innocence while the “impartial pursuit of justice”…
The murder case of Salvadoran martyr Blessed Oscar Romero has been reopened. The Archbishop of San Salvador, an outspoken critic of the violence in the El Salvador Civil War as well as poverty and corruption in the Central American country, was shot and killed while celebrating Mass in 1980, but because of an amnesty prohibiting…
Pope calls for an end to violent clashes in Central African Republic Pope Francis has prayed for the end of conflict between Christian and Muslim militias in the Central African Republic. Last week clashes between the two warring sides intensified in the eastern town of Bria on May 20, which led to the deaths of…