A play about the heroic Irish priest Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty is set for its first overseas performances God Has No Country, by Kerry actor and playwright Donal Courtney about the Rome-based World War Two priest, will be performed in Rochester, New York and Penn State University, Pennsylvania in March and April. There have been proposals…
Dr Kevin Myers Most Irish people continue to believe in life after death but many don’t see the Church as the only path to salvation, writes Dr Kevin Myers “Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” Penned by John Donne, this sonnet verse proclaims man’s…
The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has dismissed a threat of ‘fraternal correction’ of Pope Francis in connection with the ongoing Amoris Laetitia row. In an interview with Italian TV last weekend, Cardinal Gerhard Muller responded to the earlier threat issued by Cardinal Raymond Burke that a formal correction of the…
The year 2016 saw 28 Catholic pastoral care workers die by violence worldwide. In its annual report on those religious and lay killed in the course of their work, the Church’s news body, Agenzia Fides, reveals that “in 2016 14 priests, nine religious women, one seminarian and four lay people died violently”. The Americas were…
Iraq’s Chaldean Patriarch has spoken of an outpouring of solidarity for Christians in Baghdad over the Christmas period by Muslims eager to reject the ideology and divisiveness of so-called Islamic State (ISIS). In a New Year’s interview with AsiaNews, Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako described how young Muslims travelled from the city of Najaf to attend…
The Salesian Order has confirmed that a video loaded to the Youtube site on Christmas Eve shows Fr Tom Uzhunnalil, the priest of that congregation kidnapped in Yemen last March. Visibly thin and wearing a long beard, the priest appears in the five-minute video to urge Pope Francis as well as the government of his…
Pope urges prison reform in wake of Brazilian riot Pope Francis has prayed for the victims of the January 1 prison riot in Manaus, Brazil, and voiced again his appeal that prisons be reformed to better rehabilitate people with real dignity. During his general audience of January 4, the Pontiff lamented the loss of life…
Icicles hang from a fountain in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Rome has not been immune to a blast of icy weather across the European continent. Photo: CNS
Dear Editor, I have to disagree with Danny Cusack’s reference to “squandering the pro-life movement for a tawdry triumph” in the election of Donald Trump as US President (Letters, IC 15/12/2016) I also left Amnesty over its campaigning for abortion, the destruction of the most vulnerable and helpless of all, but, if Hillary Clinton had…
Dear Editor, Catholics must always seek to be faithful to the Pope. But irrespective of the teaching in Amoris Laetitia, the Vatican response to Cardinal Burke et al. is a source of scandal. The four simply said “we the undersigned, but also many bishops and priests, have received numerous requests from the faithful of various…
