Fr Charlie McDonnell praised the “support and cooperation” of priests and pilgrims in making the extended Reek Pilgrimage season a success. Traditionally, the last Sunday of the month – called Reek Sunday – was dedicated to making pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been going ahead this year in an…
Counsels of the Holy Spirit: A Reading of Saint Ignatius’s Letters by Patrick C Goujon SJ, translated by Joseph Munitiz SJ (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) Counsels of the Holy Spirit promises in the blurb that “the lay reader will find [it] an accessible and practical guide to the core concepts of Ignatian spirituality”. Being myself a…
Personal Profile Fr Henry McCann is one of the few priests who can relive his ordination in full, even though it took place 25 years ago. The parish priest and hospital chaplain recently celebrated his Silver Jubilee, and, in light of the occasion, had a look at the video footage of the ceremony that took…
Sacred Heart College Omagh wished runner Eilish Flanagan all the best, as she represents Ireland at the Tokyo Olympics starting July 23. Ms Flanagan studied at the Tyrone secondary school for seven years, winning a range of competitions, before taking up a scholarship in athletics in Adams State University in Colorado. She was selected to…
The Pope’s letter restricting the ‘Extraordinary Form’ has caused emotive responses, Ruadhán Jones hears Pope Francis’ decision to restrict celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or ‘Extraordinary Form’ caused a predictable stir when it was released Friday, July 16. In it, he effectively rolled back the more permissive legislation introduced by Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI…
France’s society for the protection of birds has issued a plea for the reconstruction of Notre-Dame to keep the original holes atop the edifice that were home to kestrels and other species for centuries before the cathedral was devastated by fire in 2019. Under current plans they could be removed, the Irish Independent reported. The…
It is “disrespectful” and “biased propaganda” to demand the Religious Sisters of Charity award the land for the National Maternity Hospital to the State, the Editor-in-Chief of the Irish Journal of Medical Science has said. Dr Bill Tormey told The Irish Catholic that the “nuns would be ill-advised to award the land to the State”…
Ahead of the Church’s first Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, the patron of the Catholic Grandparents Association stressed the importance of close relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. “The value of someone who can help the young person to broaden their horizon and approach challenges from another angle is hugely important for the young,” Archbishop…
Personal Profile The Church’s emphasis on older people as “treasures of the Church” and “teachers of wisdom and prayer” is a much-needed antidote to our age’s tendency to side-line the elderly. So says Catherine Wiley, founder of the Catholic Grandparent’s Association (CGA) and herself a mother and grandmother. She and the CGA have been on…
A new Biblical anthropology seeks to answer the perennial question, what is man, Ruadhán Jones hears Scriptural studies are as old as the hills; anthropology is little more than 150 years old. In bringing the two together, the Pontifical Biblical Commission is living out the call of Vatican II to read the signs of the…