Archbishop Eamon Martin has criticised a lack of ambition in the Government’s Housing for All plan in a written response to Minister Darragh O’Brien’s request that the Church identify property it owns to use in tackling the housing crisis. While welcoming the plan, Archbishop Martin wrote that “sadly”, Ireland’s current national crisis in housing has…
The Catholic Church has always embraced meditation on death, and November is the month most associated with that, writes Jason Osborne The leaves continue to fall from the trees as nature uses the rest of autumn to prepare for winter, a fitting natural symbol of death, which is at the forefront of Catholic minds in the…
Legacy Supplement 2021 – A Future Full of Hope Operation Smile continues to combat cleft lips, palates and stigma around the world, through Covid and beyond, hears Jason Osborne Cleft lips and cleft palates aren’t too much a feature of day-to-day life in Ireland or the western world anymore, modern science and medicine allowing these…
Personal Profile When Dr Alex O’Hara visited Clonmacnoise as an eleven-year-old, he could hardly have known that it would be a life-defining moment. But looking back now, the professor of early Church history and Irish monasticism knows that this visit and another to a monastery in Normandy had a “profound effect” on him. Dr O’Hara’s…
Pope Francis received US President Joe Biden Friday, in what was the president’s first official trip to the Vatican since his inauguration. The private meeting is the longest to take place between the Pope and a head of state, lasting an unusually long 75 minutes. President Biden is said to have thanked the Pope for…
Irish faith-based NGO Viatores Christi (VC) recently launched an online training platform, UPSKILLS, for missionaries, development and humanitarian aid workers. Upskills is a suite of “affordable, easily accessible and practical online training courses” aimed at helping such workers in their missions. “The online platform of self-conducted courses has been developed in response to a growing…
The latest trends and advances in technology are changing funeral practices in Ireland and around the world, writes Jason Osborne The world seems more fluid than ever before, and even the age-old traditions surrounding death and funerals aren’t immune to the effects of the current trends and technology reshaping everything we know. Speaking to The Irish…
The recent Budget continues to neglect the needs of “people and families”, prominent economist Professor Ray Kinsella has said. “Social capital…these days is actually far more important than financial capital,” Prof. Kinsella told The Irish Catholic, noting that Ireland has no “social-economic core” to the Budget. Prof. Kinsella’s comments come amid claims that the most…
St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican was the site of Conor McGregor’s newborn son, Rían’s, Baptism last weekend. The fighter’s family were said to have arrived at the Vatican in minibuses, entering through a door that leads directly to the Choir Chapel, where baptisms can take place inside the Basilica. It is often a lengthy…
The current trend pushing for a public holiday commemorating St Brigid as a ‘celtic goddess’ is “disingenuous” and “reflects people’s ignorance of history”, a prominent Church historian has said. Recent trends, including a campaign to make St Brigid’s day Ireland’s new public holiday, have emphasised the Celtic, pre-Christian goddess Bríg, rather than the “genuine, historical…