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 )
Courtney McGrail
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…
Vatican Round-up
Women’s Conference makes progress but ‘more to be done’ Over a hundred mainly female participants have attended Rome’s second International Conference on Women, organised by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, in collaboration with the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) and the World Women’s Alliance for Life and Family (WWALF). With a theme of ‘Women and the post-2015 development agenda…
Life’s Little Things
The Author Winston Pendleton wrote “The best way to get a puppy is to beg for a baby brother and they’ll settle for a puppy every time”. Despite having provided both a baby brother and sister, my children tell me that they still want a pet. As a youngster, I lived in terror of my…