Dear Editor, Election 2016 is probably the most important the country has faced since the foundation of the State. In all previous elections we voted for the party or candidate who we believed would do the best for the country. This time the choice will be to vote for who will do the least damage…
Chloe Mangan Chloe Mangan describes what it means to have a Catholic ethos in her school I feel really lucky to be a student in a Catholic school managed by the CEIST Trust. Our prayer room is a wonderful facility. It is a room of escapism, tranquillity and silence. Moments of appreciation, forgiveness, or sorrow…
Arthur Griffith by Owen McGee (Merrion Press, €27.00) Colum Kenny Arthur Griffith, the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State in 1922, deserves more respect than he gets. This intriguing and polemical volume will help to redress the balance. Born in Dominick Street in 1872, and having shared the hardships of so…
Journey of Love: Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, a Readers Guide by Eugene McCaffrey OCD, with a foreword by Vincent O’Hara OCD (Teresian Press, £4.00; www.carmelitebooks.com). The author is well known from his talks, retreats and his writings on St Teresa, largely at Avila in Dublin where he is based. This little book, written for…
The hidden past of Viking Dublin A few weeks before Christmas, there was published what was among the most important Irish books of last year. This was Patrick Wallace’s Viking Dublin: The Wood Quay Excavations (Irish Academic Press, €60.00 hb), the final magisterial report on archaeological investigations into Viking Dublin, which began in Christ Church Place…
In what is being hailed as the biggest ecumenical development in decades, Pope Francis is to meet with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch on February 12 during a two-hour stopover on the way to Mexico. Describing the first ever meeting of a Pope and Russian patriarch, as “an event that, in the ecumenical journey and in…
Attacks on a UN base in Timbuktu have “almost certainly” been perpetuated by an Islamist group, according to the secretary general of the Episcopal Conference of Mali. Claiming that Tuareg rebel groups are committed to peace agreements signed with the government, and that there is no fighting between them and either the Malian army or…
Christian leaders in Pakistan have welcomed suggestions by Muhammad Khan Sherani, President of the Islamic Ideology Council, that the country’s repressive blasphemy might be amended. While there is a possibility that the already strict law could be made more censorious, Christian activist Nasir Saeed, director of the Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement, said…
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta decided to reject plans for rules to regulate religious worship following consultations with religious leaders, the secretary general of the Kenyan Episcopal Conference has said. Religious Societies Rules 2015, which Kenya’s bishops had believed defied constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and the separation of Church and State, will not now be…
Vatican joins international call to help Syria The Vatican has joined international appeals to raise funds for emergency and long-term assistance to victims of the Syrian crisis. Speaking at the Syria Donors’ Conference in London, Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, Vatican secretary for relations with states, said the Church would continue to help the region through its fundraising efforts. In his address,…