It was a parish priest who gave award-winning Irish filmmaker Campbell Miller the break he so badly needed. Without the encouragement of Fr Colin Crossey, from Newcastle, Co. Down, Miller might not have pursued his talent which is about to be showcased in the United States. His latest docudrama, St Patrick – The Hidden Years,…
Few lessons from my days at primary school stand out, but I do remember one class very clearly. A grammar lesson that was really about inclusive language and equality. Our teacher told us that the word “chairman” was wrong. It should be chairperson, and “his” should be “his or hers”. This appealed to my sense…
Experience, wrote CS Lewis, is a brutal teacher. And former politician Peter Mandelson, who has been disgraced over his ties to notorious sex offender and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, once taught me a lesson. We were both attending one of those awful receptions for “the great and the good”. I was there as a BBC…
For almost 30 years, Bernie Smyth has been at the forefront of the pro-life movement in the north of Ireland – taking the battle against abortion to the streets, television studios – even the courts. But, now that the law in Ireland, north and south, facilitates abortion, there’s been a subtle shift after years of…
It was early autumn in 1987, when a Catholic couple, named Mary and Joseph, approached their Parish Priest in Belfast with a request – which, looking back, was clearly an inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The couple had been married on February 11, 1950, the Feast of our Lady of Lourdes, and wished to express…
A divine invitation came my way the other day: to look to the rock from which I was hewn. Actually, it was not put quite like Isaiah’s words in chapter 51, verse one. But those words echoed and so I’m heading to Downpatrick this Sunday, on the first day of the Irish Spring, as the…
Would you have the faith to buy a one-way ticket to Lourdes, check into the best hotel, without a penny – and trust that the Mother of God would pick up the tab? Well that’s what a young Irish American priest did to mark the fifth anniversary of his ordination – though his nerve wavered…
I once laughed like the biblical Sarah after reading a letter from a Christian woman I had never met. She wrote to tell me about a vivid dream she had experienced, revealing that I would visit the Holy Land. At the time, I was living in a fairly strict convent in Belfast and saw no…
When it comes to sport, all I really know is what seeps into my brain against my will – or what I’ve gleaned from entertaining Hollywood films! But a New Year spat over a sports headline caught my eye. It involved a retired Tyrone football star, Conor Meyler, and an Irish News columnist, Kenny Archer. The…
The name of my house is “Living Hope”; these words, on a sign by the front door, light up at night, a great reminder of St Peter’s message in his first letter: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us a new birth…