Humour was welcome in an intense week, writes Brendan O’Regan
Courtney McGrail
The modernisation of the world from differing perspectives
Ten books that caused controversy in their analyses of the Middle Ages are put under the spotlight on medievalists.net. Stephen Greenlat’s award-winning 2011 book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, which addresses the end of the Middle Ages and the beginnings of the Renaissance, is identified as a book disliked by medievalists “partially because…
Fatima: What happened afterwards
A Pathway under the Gaze of Mary: Biography of Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart O.C.D. by the Carmel of Saint Teresa, Coimbra, Portugal (World Apostolate of Fatima, €25; available from publishers at www.bluearmy.com )
The inner truth of Stabat Mater
Stabat Mater: The Mystery Hymn by Desmond Fisher (Gracewing, €9.99)
On the track of Irish monks in Europe
On the Pathways of the World / Sulle Strade del Mondo by Enzo Farrinella (Edizioni Casa Italia, €15.00; contact enzo.farinella@gmail.com)
Asian Church leaders call for boat people to be given refuge
Church leaders in Southeast Asia have called on governments to help modern boat people, following the discovery of 139 mass graves in Malaysia and the rescue of 3,000 people in the Andaman Sea and off the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The discoveries, which took place at 28 locations between May 11 and May…
Christian, Kurdish soldiers unite to push back Isis
Islamic State (IS) forces have been driven back in northeastern Syria. Kurdish and Assyrian Christian troops have taken control of the Abdul-Aziz Mountain near the village of Tal Tamar in the province of Hassakeh, bordering Turkey and Iraq. IS militants had in February used the mountain as a base for their seizure of villages along…
Nebraska legislature votes to repeal the death penalty
The Nebraska Legislature has voted 32-15 to repeal the death penalty. The majority is large enough to override Republican governor Pete Ricketts' promised veto. The bill banning the death penalty, L.B 268, will apply retroactively, giving those currently on death row a sentence of life without parole. There are currently 11 such prisoners in the…
Suffering continues as South Sudan claims progress in war on rebels
South Sudanese forces have pushed back rebels from a key oil town, a video shown on state television has shown. The video played on South Sudan TV showed tanks, supported by a helicopter gunship, attacking rebels in the town of Melut in the oil-rich northern state of Upper Nile, with at least three armoured barges,…
Call for Pope to take firmer stand on Ukraine conflict
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…