Dear Editor, It is clear the narrative around the demand for secular or multidenominational schools is completely overstated by the Government, media and lobby groups. This was highlighted by some schools, in areas earmarked for changes in patronage, finding that a huge majority of parents wanted their school to remain under Catholic patronage. It’s important…
Local Matters: Parish, Local Government and Community in Ireland, by Dr Finola Kennedy (Institute of Public Administration, €25.00) Frank Litton The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre traced his early commitment to Marxism to his experience growing up in London’s East End where his parents worked as doctors. It was the communists’ contributions to the neighbourhood that drew…
Young people told to ‘Open hearts to other cultures’ Pope Francis told young people to always “look to the horizon” and open their hearts to other peoples and cultures. In a video message to the 400,000 participants registered for World Youth Day 2023, the Pope encouraged young people not to “put up walls” that close…
SVP gives thanks for ‘immense’ 250k donations St Vincent de Paul South-West Region thanked the public for the “immense” support shown as over €248,000 was raised from the annual car draw. The SVP have said they are humbled by the generosity of the public during an extremely difficult and challenging period. Regional President Paddy O’Flynn…
An exhibition in Spain shows a hyper-realistic model of the man who is represented in the Turin Shroud, writes Filipe d’Avillez Few religious items have been more thoroughly analysed than the Shroud of Turin. The burial cloth has been at the centre of intense scientific debate for decades, and with each new discovery and revelation,…
The death of Australian Cardinal George Pell was a shock because just five days earlier he had concelebrated the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI and “seemed in good health,” said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals. In his homily at Cardinal Pell’s funeral Mass January 14 in St Peter’s Basilica, Cardinal…
On the five-year anniversary of the late Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan, her family said that she was really excited to return to her native Co. Limerick and be close to the Benedictine monastery Glenstal Abbey. In a statement on January 14, the family said: “She loved to take long walks in the abbey’s surrounding parklands…
If people of faith are going to sustain Christian commitment in a world swirling with endless possibilities for re-invention they need to have had an authentic experience of God, writes Fr Michael Kirwan SJ The prominent Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner made an astonishing claim about how he saw the future of the Church and of…
Dozens of abductees are still being held in captivity following the Christmas Day attack on Angwan Aku Village in Kaduna, a state located in the north of Nigeria, a Catholic priest in the West African country has told ACI Africa in an interview. On Christmas Day 2022, militant Fulani herdsmen and other terrorists attacked Angwan Aku village,…
Cardinal Pell’s 400 days in tough prisons in solitary can be seen as the best thing that happened to him, writes Fr Brendan Purcell When I was a philosophy lecturer at University College Dublin, our staff Newman group wanted to invite some notable figure or other to give a talk in the millennium year. We…