A charity election campaign that has energised a Wexford parish since January has raised over €72,000 and boosted community spirit, according to a local priest. Describing the ‘Mayor of Barntown’ election as “an election in which everybody has won”, Fr John Carroll told The Irish Catholic a huge debt of gratitude is due to many…
Expressions of support for Marie Collins from members of the Vatican’s child protection commission are a “validation” for her position, the former commission member has said. Mrs Collins stepped down last month from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors after almost three months on the body of which she had been a founder…
Greg Daly wonders why the ethics watchdog has sanctioned just one pro-abortion group That an organisation calling itself the Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) should ever have denied that it was engaged in political activities seems, on the face of it, absurd, and it is hardly surprising that it was ultimately forced to face this reality.…
Greg Daly meets a Tearfund ‘early responder’ on the frontline of crises in the Philippines Originally from Manila, 37-year-old Dandin Espina had always thought he’d be a minister in his Church, the Pentecostal Church of God, but God, he says, had other plans. “I was in seminary,” he says. “I had thought I’d be a pastor, but…
Taoiseach’s Enda Kenny’s St Patrick’s Day comments in the White House have been welcomed by chaplains to the Irish community in the US. Speaking alongside US President Donald Trump the day before St Patrick’s Day, Mr Kenny said of the saint: “He too of course was an immigrant. And though he is, of course, the…
The Church has given a qualified welcome to speculation that the Government is likely to push schools to prioritise locally-based children in their admissions. This proposal, which would bar Church-owned schools from favouring children of their own faith from outside school catchment areas ahead of non-religious or minority faith children who live nearby, has been…
Greg Daly explores the historical roots of the mentality that created Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home History and commemoration are, as President Higgins observed in a speech in Dublin’s Mansion House almost exactly a year ago, different things. Commemoration, he noted, is typically mediated through present-day concerns, and stands always in danger of being exploited…
In the days following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and with both houses of Congress in the hands of a Republican party keen to limit immigration and abolish President Obama’s healthcare system, there were no shortage of voices online calling for a withdrawal from civic life. “I’m just going…
With declining numbers of priests, lay people are stepping up to lead worship, writes Greg Daly Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention, so on Tuesday, April 25, while the clergy of the Diocese of Limerick are gathering with Bishop Brendan Leahy, every parish in the diocese is to have a lay-led liturgy…
Greg Daly learns about a new project for music and liturgy in Dublin’s city centre “I don’t think the archbishop asked us here to maintain the status quo,” says Steven Warner, associate director of the Notre Dame Newman Centre, based since last autumn at the University Church on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green. “I can’t speak…