While St John Paul II’s devotion to Fatima may be proverbial, and while Pope Francis’ visit to the shrine may be filling the headlines, it is always worth remembering that their devotion to Fatima is one shared by countless Catholics – and even, as described below, Muslims! Some four million people visit the Portuguese shrine…
Parish, families and schools all have key roles to play in sacramental preparation, Greg Daly hears For at least one speaker at last weekend’s McAuley Conference in Limerick’s Mary Immaculate College, the question of whether sacramental preparation should be removed from schools is a simple one. “Yes,” said Stijn Van den Bossche, continuing, “this is…
Greg Daly describes Pope Francis’ brief but moving pilgrimage to Fatima If doubts remained in any hearts about how Pope Francis thinks over Our Lady, his words at a candlelit ceremony last weekend in Fatima’s apparition chapel should have banished them. “I feel that Jesus has entrusted you to me,” he said, thanking the gathered…
Greg Daly examines the lives of the Fatima visionaries Remarkable though the Fatima apparitions were, last weekend’s canonisations owed less to the visions witnessed by Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto than to how their lives were transformed by their encounter with Our Lady. “The apparition of the Virgin Mary was an occasion, but it has…
Campaigner Marie Collins has welcomed praise for her from Pope Francis as support for her work and her reasons about stepping down from the Vatican child protection commission earlier this year. “It was nice to hear the Pope’s comments about myself, and it is I suppose a validation of the work I’ve done and the…
Fatima was central to the spirituality of St John Paul II, writes Greg Daly “In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences,” declared St John Paul II in Fatima on May 12, 1982, a day short of the first anniversary of Mehmet Ali Agca’s attempt on the then Pope’s life in St Peter’s…
Greg Daly explores one of the Portuguese appartions’ most intriguing aspects In the decades following the apparitions, Fatima was mainly known, like Lourdes and other Marian sites, as a place of healing. However, in her 1941 memoirs, Sr Lucia wrote about how during Our Lady’s third apparition, she gave the children a message in three…
The finances of Dublin archdiocese have never been so transparent, writes Greg Daly On the face of it, comparing this year’s financial reports from the Archdiocese of Dublin with its Share Newsletters of previous years is a case of comparing apples and oranges. Previous practice in the archdiocese entailed the publication, typically in April, of…
Society will be impoverished if religion is barred from influencing public life, while Faith is impoverished if it is compartmentalised and treated as a purely private activity, Archbishop Eamon Martin has said. Speaking at Norwich’s University of East Anglia on the theme ‘The Church in the Public Sphere – a perspective from Ireland’, the Archbishop…
Most Dublin parishes are struggling to stay afloat and many are not sustainable in the long term, The Irish Catholic understands. It comes after the publication of the first of two sets of accounts the diocese will issue this year bringing unprecedented financial transparency. A source told The Irish Catholic that based on current figures…