An obscure border village in South Armagh has just received some famous visitors: St Paul the Apostle, St Teresa of Avila and St Agnes, among others. Actually, it was their relics that visited Meigh, a little village which rests in the shadow of Slieve Gullion. It was here that Shalom World TV decided, apparently for…
I have learned a new word in time for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell, the leader of Catholic emancipation: eleutherophilia. It means a passion for liberty; but the term can also refer to a mental disorder: a manic or mad irresistible craving for freedom. This mania – a dangerous belief that…
It was once known as Vinegar Hill, or Little Dublin, a colonial outpost settled by Irish immigrants, fleeing the famine. Having carried their faith and their culture to what is now the village of Markham, Ontario, Canada, these Irish men and women built a little Catholic church in 1862 on Rouge Street. They named it…
My friend’s son worked for a while as a tour guide in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast. Two Americans got off the bus in the dockland area and were quite perplexed: “But where is the Titanic?” they wanted to know. They were genuinely shocked to hear it had sunk. The Titanic looms large in Belfast,…
Almost a century ago, his great great grandfather donated the land for the national monument to St Patrick at Saul, Co. Down. And now, his namesake, Thomas John Hampton is set to become the first priest in four decades to be ordained in the parish of Saul, the place where St Patrick began his mission…
The monsignor, with a global mission linked to Blessed Carlo Acutis, had just departed County Down when the news was announced last Friday: the young Italian would be canonised in Rome on September 7. Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo – himself no stranger to headlines due to the saga of Cardinal Ted McCarrick – had been in…
I was covering the peace process, in the days before the Good Friday Agreement was forged, there was a lot of talk about a ‘Pan-Nationalist Front’. It was a unionist term for an alliance forged by the Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, SDLP leader John Hume, and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to pursue a peace settlement. It’s…
There’s glitter on the seats,” the woman in front of me observed, with a friendly smile. She was shuffling into the pew in front of me. “The first communion children!” We both smiled. The boys and girls of the parish had been at Mass for the sacrament the day before. It was not my parish.…
Celtic Christian blessings roll off his tongue with a gentle ease, as he recites an ancient prayer, capturing ‘the spirit of the Irish’. “I weave a silence on my lips,” prayed Fr Ephrem. “I weave a silence into my mind. I weave a silence within my heart…” With our eyes closed to distractions, the tumult…
Belfast’s youngest parish priest could not resist the road to Rome on May 8. Fr Conor McGrath had just marked his 38th birthday. There are only a handful of priests his age in Down and Connor where he also serves as vocations director. In the years to come, would he get another chance to see…