Homelessness campaigners have cautiously welcomed the latest package of measures agreed by the Government to address the country’s homelessness crisis. After a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, ministers Alan Kelly and Michael Noonan announced a series of measures including barring landlords from increasing residential rents for two years, obliging property owners to give longer notice to…
Greg Daly
Closed church will take on new life as community facility
Ireland’s first modern church, inspired by the spirit of Vatican II in the 1960s, is to be converted into a state-of-the-art library and auditorium for the local community. St Dominic’s Church in Athy, Co. Kildare will close on November 22, when the town’s Dominican community will celebrate its final Mass before a joint ceremony of…
Marriage vote shows need for Church to ‘support Catholic politicians’
A leading priest-theologian has said the Church needs to work harder to support and form the consciences of Catholic politicians. Commenting in the aftermath of this week’s same-sex marriage vote in Stormont, Fr Niall Coll, who lectures at St Mary’s College, Belfast, told The Irish Catholic that “Catholicism in the past was so social and…
Bishops’ staff paid up to €130k a year
Top-earning officials of the Irish Bishops’ Conference are being paid up to €130,000.00 per year, according to latest accounts. Accounts for the ‘hierarchy general purposes trust’ for 2014 reveal that one employee in the Church’s central administration is paid between €120,000 and €130,000 per year, a second is paid between €110,000 and €120,000 and a…
Budget is criticised for not tackling homlessness crisis
Campaigners have condemned the absence of concrete measures in next year’s Budget to prevent the spiralling homelessness crisis. Mike Allen, Focus Ireland’s Director of Advocacy, told The Irish Catholic that: “We were hoping there’d be measures to deal with the ever rising tide of families becoming homeless, but the Government hasn’t put in any significant…
Lack of funding forces Limerick’s Dominican Biblical Institute to close
The Limerick-based Dominican Biblical Institute (DBI) is in the final stages of closure due a severe lack of funding since the financial crash. DBI Director Fr Gerard Norton OP has confirmed that the DBI board’s final meeting has taken place, the company has ceased trading and it is preparing to apply to be voluntarily struck…
Building a real ‘rainbow coalition’ to protect women and the unborn
For congressman Chris Smith, who has represented New Jersey in the US House of Representatives since 1981, opposition to abortion rests on the same principles as his roles as co-chairman of the Coalition for Autism Research and Education and of the bipartisan Congressional Alzheimer’s Task Force. “To me it comes from the same impulse,” he…
Bishops should feel the experience of Christian refugees
Iraq’s most prominent bishop has called upon the synod of bishops to “feel the experience” of Christian refugees who, rather than converting to Islam when threatened with violence, have abandoned their homes and possessions. In a homily opening the synod’s sixth day, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako said “Faith, like love, is a…
Sheep in Wolf’s clothing
An award-winning novel gets Reformation England profoundly wrong, Greg Daly is told
2,500 young people will be homeless by Christmas, Trust campaigners warn
Almost 2,500 people aged 24 or younger could be homeless in Ireland by Christmas, campaigners have said. Speaking at the launch of Ireland’s first youth café for homeless people, Peter McVerry Trust CEO Pat Doyle urged TUSLA and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to play a much more prominent and proactive role in…
