A controversial priest who the Vatican removed from ministry in 2012 has said there is “no possibility” now of him signing a statement that he accepts the fullness of Church teaching. Writing on his website, Fr Tony Flannery CSsR says the head of his order has told him that although he had been withdrawn from…
Gratitude to the stories that formed him drives one of England’s leading Catholic writers, writes Greg Daly Liverpool, that most Irish of English cities, is still a place with Catholicism in its bones, and a natural home even now for the Liverpool-born writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce. “I have been other places,” he says, having studied…
Confusion continues to surround the actions of the Religious Sisters of Charity around the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group and plans to build a new National Maternity Hospital, apparently without a religious ethos and all set to perform abortions on the grounds of St Vincent’s Hospital in south Dublin. A year and a half ago the…
A Co. Down-based priest and writer has criticised this summer’s World Meeting of Families (WMOF) for watering down the Christian vision of the family to become more acceptable to current secular understandings of family life. Writing in The Furrow, Fr Andrew McMahon observes that although there were “unquestionably edifying aspects” of WMOF2018, a desire for…
The Camino de Santiago was a very different experience in the Middle Ages, writes Greg Daly A biography of Red Hugh O’Donnell, written a few years after the Gaelic lord’s death in 1602, made much of how the earl had visited Breóghan’s Tower in A Coruña on his arrival in Spain in the aftermath of…
Waterford and Lismore’s Bishop Phonsie Cullinan will consult with the Vatican before moving forward with the first stages of the canonisation cause of a well-loved Waterford priest. November 28 saw 104 people from three parishes meeting at Clonmel’s Hotel Minella to share stories about Fr Colm O’Brien, who died of cancer in 2009, aged just…
Canon law may still block proposal The Archdiocese of Dublin has been left in the dark over plans by the Religious Sisters of Charity to relinquish control of the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group and enable the building of a new National Maternity Hospital. According to a diocesan spokesperson, there has been no contact between…
A new model of ‘team ministry’ across parishes will allow parishes to pool talents while keeping their own distinct identities, according to Limerick’s Bishop Brendan Leahy. In a pastoral letter last weekend, Dr Leahy mapped out a plan to arrange the Diocese of Limerick’s parishes into ‘pastoral units’, groups of parishes served by teams of…
Churches are on the front lines in reaching out to people suffering from violence in the home, priests have said. “In certain parts of Ireland I’d say it would be a big part of your ministry, and not an easy one,” Cork-based Redemptorist Fr Gerry O’Connor told The Irish Catholic, explaining that priests are often…
Care for victims has to be taken into account when priests credibly accused of abuse die, an abuse survivor and child protection campaigner has said. Speaking against the background of complaints from the Association of Catholic Priests that “proper funerals” are sometimes denied to priests who die while facing allegations of abuse, Mark Vincent Healy…