Students from the choir of St Mary’s College, Derry, singing at an ecumenical service at First Derry Presbyterian Church during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
Courtney McGrail
US abortion rates at 40-year low
Abortions in the United States have fallen to their lowest number since legalisation with the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organisation committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, 926,200 terminations were recorded in 2014, a decline of 32,500 over the previous year and the…
Time to love them both
Members of the Pro Life Campaign pictured during a demonstration with the group’s latest banner campaign to save the Eighth Amendment protection for the unborn, taking place during the gathering of the Citizens’ Assembly on abortion. Photo courtesy of the Pro Life Campaign.
Bearing gifts we traverse afar…
Three Wise Men from the Scoil ĺosa primary school Christmas pageant in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo. Photo: Stephen Farragher.
Portrait of the Blessed
Bishop Fintan Monahan of Killaloe with Navan-based artist Agnieszka Ryan and her portrait of Blessed John Henry Newman, which Tuam Council of Priests had commissioned as a gift for the bishop, a former priest of the Archdiocese of Tuam. Bishop Monahan has long been an admirer of the 19th-Century cardinal, about whom his licentiate thesis…
News in Brief
Bishop William Crean address Bishop William Crean will address the annual Diocese of Kerry Clergy Assembly on January 10. The title of his talk is ‘From what wells do we drink now? – Reflections on the changing patterns of faith and practice in Ireland today’. The venue is the Gleneagle Hotel, Muckross Road, Killarney, beginning…
An Arab Islamic Institute for Dublin?
Secret of the powers that be Over the last 30 years the Islamic presence in Dublin has grown. I wrote about this then about in my book Dublin Churches, for the only mosque on the North Circular Road was making use of a former Presbyterian church. The first Muslim presence was due to Malayan medical…
RDS Christmas dinner sees record attendance
The Christmas Day Dinner hosted by the Knights of St Columbanus served a record 3,500 meals this year to those in need. The figure is 500 more than for 2015 and represents a continued year-on-year growth for the charitable event. “On Christmas Day, people like Brother Kevin of the Capuchin Day centre take the day…
News in Brief
Msgr Colm McCaughan RIP The death has taken place of Msgr Colm McCaughan, former Chancellor of the Diocese of Down & Connor. He was 89. Born in 1927 in Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, Colm began his studies for the priesthood in 1946 and was ordained in 1954. He assumed his first appointment as curate in Bangor.…
Pro Cathedral launches annual unwanted gifts collection drive
Staff Reporter The annual collection of unwanted gifts at Dublin’s St Mary’s Pro Cathedral got underway on St Stephen’s Day and runs until January 6. An initiative of Crosscare, the archdiocese’s social care agency, the collection invites anyone who is willing to ‘re-gift’ a Christmas present to drop parcels at St Mary’s crib. The gifts…