Deacon Greg Kandra April 30, 2023, Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 2:14a, 36-41 Ps 23: 1-3a, 3b4, 5, 6 1 Pt 2:20b-25 Jn 10:1-10 Most of us would probably admit: we don’t know a lot of shepherds. (Where I live, in Queens, New York, they are pretty scarce.) But I met one a few…
Minister for Education Norma Foley received hundreds of letters from parents, teachers, school principals and medical professionals over plans to reform sex education in primary and secondary schools. The letters question plans for children to be taught about subjects including masturbation, pornography and consent, according to The Sunday Independent. In one letter a primary school…
Clonard Redemptorist monastery, Belfast – which was at the centre of peace-making efforts during the Troubles – hosted a “recommitment service” on Sunday, April 16. Community leaders, clerics and political dignitaries including US Special Envoy Joseph Kennedy III, joined in tribute to peace workers who were inspired by their faith, 25 years on from the…
How much time is too much time online? It’s a question facing all of us in the 21st Century, as technology becomes more and more integrated into our lives. How do we balance work, shopping, reading, communicating – all the ways that we use technology – with a desire to be intentionally present in our…
One of the top military hospitals in the US says it is reviewing a Catholic pastoral care contract it awarded last month to a Virginia-based firm that specialises in providing government clients with industrial machinery, tactical gear, and janitorial supplies, in addition to chaplains and other religious staff. Franciscan friars at Holy Name College in nearby Silver…
Gina Christian A new report concludes that Russia is systematically persecuting believers of several faiths in Ukraine as part of a campaign of “cultural genocide”. “We see that Russia is now exporting (its) policies of state repression with laws in occupied Ukraine, which the Russian government considers to be Russia,” George Barros, geospatial intelligence team…
Frank Litton The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, by Martin Wolf (Allen Lane, £30.00/€34.50) For all its faults, democratic capitalism is worth defending. But it is in grave peril” and “Democracy [in the United States] is not yet a lost cause. But it is highly endangered”. These are not the words of a maverick seeking attention…
At least 94 people reportedly have died in a series of deadly attacks on Christian communities throughout Holy Week in Benue state in north-central Nigeria, an ominous sign of escalating violence blamed on Muslim militias in the country’s Middle Belt region. On April 2, armed men reportedly stormed a Palm Sunday service at a Pentecostal church in…
Jem Sullivan April 23, 2023 Third Sunday of EasterActs 2:14, 22-33 Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11 I Peter 1:17-21 Luke 24:13-35 Think of a memorable meal you had recently, or in the past. Perhaps it was a casual family gathering or a formal occasion. It may have been in a secluded place or…
The dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, has confiscated a cloistered monastery and arrested 20 people for activities related to Holy Week in Nicaragua. The Trappist sisters of Nicaragua, who left the country in February after 22 years of service, reported April 11 that the government verbally informed the…