Staff reporter A leading academic has claimed that if it were not for the vocation crisis, there would be little appetite to involve lay people in the Church here. Fr Oliver Rafferty SJ, Director of Irish Studies at Boston College, insisted that “if there was not a shortage of priests in the contemporary Church the mind-set…

More than 1.8 million signatures – including 800,000 collected by Catholic organisations – were on a petition calling for action on climate change submitted by interfaith leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Heads of state gathered in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget for the summit, with leaders of Catholic organisations saying that…

Media monitors at the 57-country Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have condemned the Vatican’s trial of two journalists and their alleged sources, and have called on the Holy See to honour its commitments to press freedom. “Our main concern is for the protection of confidential sources,” said Gunnar Vrang, spokesman for OSCE’s…

Mali Church leaders insist friendship with Muslims will continue Relations between Catholics and Muslims in Mali will not be affected by the November 20 attack on Bamako’s Radisson Hotel, according to the secretary-general of Mali’s Catholic bishops’ conference. While conceding that the attack, in which at least 20 people were killed, was part of a wider Islamist campaign, Msgr Edmond Dembele recalled how…