The Vatican has given its strongest indication yet that the Irish Church in Ireland should act to prevent abortions from taking place in hospitals owned by religious orders. “The Church cannot be a party to the dirty work of others [abortion] and I don’t think that it is right that the law [in Ireland] now…
Organisers of this August’s World Meeting of Families (WMOF) are confident that they have robust mechanisms in place to prevent efforts to sabotage attendance at the gathering’s two final papal events. A Facebook page protesting against Pope Francis’ visit is encouraging people to book but not use large numbers of free tickets to ensure a…
Speculation that homeless families would be moved out of temporary accommodation in Dublin hotels around the time of the papal visit highlights the scandal of families having to live in such condition, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said. “Archbishop Martin says that the fact that large numbers of people have to be accommodated in hotels in…
Josepha Madigan’s decision to run a Eucharistic service in a priest’s absence invites serious questions, writes Greg Daly The decision by Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan to conduct an impromptu Eucharistic service with two other readers on a Saturday evening when the priest scheduled to say Mass failed to turn…
“It’s funny, I haven’t seen any outcry from ‘pro-life’ organisations about the treatment of children at the border,” observed author and columnist Jessica Valenti last week on her @jessicavalenti Twitter account. It was, she claimed, almost as though such organisations couldn’t care less about “actual babies”. Retweeted over 70,000 times, it’s worth reflecting on in…
The Irish Church’s safeguarding advisory body has rowed back on previous advice that priests should not inform State authorities about incidents of child sex abuse disclosed during Confession, instead pointing out that canon and civil law differ on this issue. The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church had advised in their 2016…
It’s an inevitable fact that much of the religious patrimony of Ireland built up over centuries will disappear in coming years as religious orders sell off property to fund retirement care for elderly members. There is upset amongst some returned Spiritan missionaries in Dublin this week after they were told that their nursing home will…
College chaplaincy is changing to meet a changing world, writes Greg Daly Trinity College this month hosted a remarkable gathering of third-level chaplains from across Europe and further afield, and in between tours to see the Book of Kells, two Irish chaplains took time to explain what was going on. “It’s the Conference of…
Before the establishment of the Varangian Guard, when the Byzantine Emperors took to taking Vikings into their service to act as bodyguards, there were the Excubitors. In the mid-5th Century, before the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed, the Eastern or ‘Byzantine’ Emperors established an imperial guard known as ‘Sentinels’ or ‘Excubitors’. With the old…
There is huge disappointment across the Catholic community in the North as hopes fade about the prospect of a papal visit to the region, Derry’s Bishop Donal McKeown has said. With a visit by Pope Francis to Northern Ireland now looking almost impossible, Bishop McKeown has said Protestants and Catholics would have welcomed a visit.…