And so the long-awaited dig at the site of the former Tuam Children’s Home, to use its proper name, has begun. It is estimated that the dig will take around two years. The purpose is to find how many bodies are buried there, to give them a more appropriate burial and where possible to match…
Almost in the dead of night, the Government published the latest abortion figures late last week. There was no press release. Nothing was done to draw attention to the grim new total. It is as if the Government doesn’t want the figure discussed at all. Instead, the annual abortion figures were simply published on the…
A comment from the great Italian writer, Umberto Eco, has always stayed with me. Eco is most famous as the author of The Name of the Rose, a sort of intellectual murder-mystery set in a monastery during the Middle Ages and made into a movie starring Sean Connery as a sort of monk-detective. I don’t…
Unless you were hiding under a rock recently, you will at least have seen some of the images from the wedding of former TV presenter, Lauren Sanchez, to Jeff Bezos, the founder and head of Amazon and the world’s richest, or second richest man, depending on how these things are calculated. The wedding took over…
Two dreadful votes happened in the House of Commons in Britain last week. The Bills a majority of MPs voted in favour of must now go to the House of Lords. If that hurdle is cleared, the first Bill will mean that women in England and Wales will be able to abort their babies at…
You are probably accustomed to talking about the world being ‘overpopulated’. This has been a theme in public discussions going back to the 1960s, just as climate change is now. But if there was concern in the past that people were having too many babies, today there is a growing concern that they are having…
Senior representatives from RTÉ appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Communications last week, including the head of news and current affairs, Deirdre McCarthy, and Kevin Bakhurst, the Director General. Much of the time recently, RTÉ has found itself embroiled in controversies over expenses, or the amount of money paid to presenters, or presenters doing ‘nixers’,…
Juniour Certificate students are to be taught all about the institutions run by the country’s religious orders including the mother and baby homes, the industrial schools and the Magdalen laundries. Thus, they will be acquainted with what is often called a ‘dark chapter’ from our past. And yes, there are dark chapters in our past…
What does the Irish public think of the Catholic Church after all the scandals and all the reports about those same scandals down to the present day? It will probably not surprise you to discover that public attitudes are deeply split. Amarach Research has carried out a major poll on the matter which was commissioned…
It is extremely early, impossible in fact, to make any real predictions about the direction in which our new pope, Leo XIV, will lead the Church, but we are all allowed to say what our first impressions are, and mine are that he seems like a calm, gentle, intelligent and deeply prayerful man. This last…