Over 500 people took part in Liverpool’s biggest Marian procession in decades on Saturday May 30. Liverpool’s Archbishop Malcolm McMahon and Sisters from the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation founded by Mother Teresa, led children who had made their First Holy Communion through the city, stopping several times to sing a hymn and to say…

Pope Francis receives a kite from a boy during a meeting with children of Italian prisoners in Paul VI hall at the Vatican May 30. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) 

Burundi’s Catholic bishops have withdrawn permission from priests to serve on the country’s electoral council. In a statement a week before the parliamentary round of the national elections, the bishops explained that they had given a special dispensation for some priests to work with National Independent Electoral Council, but after careful analysis of the current…

Western intervention is urgently needed to halt the “monstrosities” being perpetrated in Syria and Iraq, according to a bishop whose diocese is at the heart of the conflict. Even before the rise of Islamic State, Aleppo had seen some of the worst fighting in the Syrian Civil War, with Chaldean Bishop Antoine Audo claiming last…

Vatican media to modernise The Vatican urgently needs to modernise its media operations, according to head of a new papal commission on how Rome can better communicate with the Church and the world. Speaking at a London Mass to mark World Communications Day, Chris Patten, former chairman of the British Broadcasting Corporation Trust, explained that…

Trócaire staff in South Sudan have been evacuated from an area in the north of the country as a result of heavy fighting in the region. Three staff members, who are all South Sudan nationals, have been forced to suspend vital humanitarian programmes in the Melut region and return to Juba, the country’s capital city.…

The Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) has urged the Government to reject draft legislation on assisted suicide being prepared by campaigner Tom Curran, whose late partner Marie Fleming lost a landmark right-to-die case in the Supreme Court in 2013. Cora Sherlock of the PLC told The Irish Catholic that “if our laws are telling people that they…

An Irish-born priest has been appointed as the new bishop of the English Diocese of Nottingham. Msgr Patrick McKinney (61) is the eldest son of Patrick and Bridget McKinney (deceased), originally from Ireland, and was brought up in Birmingham. His parents moved back to Ireland in the 1970s when he began his studies for the…

Dublin City returning officer James Barry has apologised to Harold’s Cross priest Fr Gerry Kane after a Sheriff’s Office official removed a crucifix from the local pastoral centre. The official had removed the crucifix as he had been told it was offensive, but on being contacted by Fr Kane offered to restore it. Mr Barry…

The head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church has called on Pope Francis to take a firmer stand on the conflict in the east of his country. Criticising what he described the Vatican’s “ambivalence” on how Russian-backed rebels have been fighting government forces for more than a year, despite an official ceasefire, Kiev-Halych’s Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk…