The World of Books Every summer some 700,000 people come together in the Breton town of Lorient for the Festival Interceltique, which sees a gathering not just of musicians and singers, but also poets, writers, and community leaders from the Celtic fringe of Western Europe, from Galicia to Galloway. But in all this feast of…
The Legacy of Irish Missionaries Lives On by Matt Moran (OnStream, €15.00) With the apparent decline of priestly vocations, the nature of Irish missionary movement has changed. I say apparent because in reality it may be that the call that was responded to in the past still exists, it is merely that the responses to…
Fr Vincent Sherlock It’s good, I suppose, to be on the back page of a newspaper without being in the obituary or ‘items for sale’ sections! There’s a lot of talk about ‘low morale’ these days. It may well be across the board, but quite often this crops up at diocesan gatherings of priests or…
‘Friends of Cuan Mhuire’, a new nationwide network to support people in recovery from addiction, opened a centre in Tralee, Co. Kerry last week. Bishop Ray Browne, who made the initiative one of the special projects for the ‘Year of Mercy’ in the Diocese of Kerry, said he hopes that the new centre at 11…
An iconic statue of the crucified Christ has been reinstated outside a church on Belfast’s Falls Road. The 20-foot ‘Passion of Christ’ figure fell from the cross outside St Paul’s Church in February. Clerics and parishioners acted quickly to move the statue and used a trolley to take it from the scene. A spokesperson for…
Marriage and family outreach movements with international aspects have been urged to promote next year’s World Meeting of Families. Speaking at a gathering of 17 groups convened by the Irish Bishops’ Conference’s Council for Marriage and the Family, Fr Tim Bartlett, Secretary General of the World Meeting of Families 2018, thanked the assembled representatives and…
Fr Paddy Moran CSSp To understand the passion of Christ is to understand the human journey, writes Fr Paddy Moran CSSp As a missionary I had the great privilege to work for 11 years in Ethiopia. I spent a number of those years working with prisoners in Arba Minch prison. Arba Minch is a town…
Congo’s bishops say Catholics are facing a new wave of violence following the collapse of a Church mediation plan, and in some places Church leaders have fled to the forest. In late March, the bishops abandoned attempts to arrange a government-opposition power-sharing settlement and, within days, violence erupted in eastern Congo. “The militias are continuing…
The number of baptised Catholics in the world grew to 1.285 billion an increase of 1% year on year according just released Vatican statistics. The latest statistical yearbook reports that the countries with the most Catholics account for almost 56% of the world’s Catholic population. The top 10 Catholic populations are (in order): Brazil, Mexico,…
A priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia responsible for a retirement home for priests faces charges of embezzling more than $535,000 (€503,000) from that same home. Msgr William Dombrow, 77, was charged by the US District Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia April 5 with four counts of wire fraud in a scheme he is alleged to…