A planned new documentary aims to counter the widespread belief that the Bons Secours Sisters who ran the Tuam mother and baby home deliberately neglected, or even murdered, more than 800 babies over its 36-year history, and then ‘dumped’ the bodies in a septic tank. The documentary is being made by local historian, Eugene Jordan.…
Taoiseach Micheal Martin has been criticised for appointing as a junior minister the only Fianna Fail TD who voted in favour of a recent bill from the Social Democrats that would have abolished the three-day waiting period before a woman can have an abortion. This was among other changes the bill would have introduced aimed…
One in four young people look set never to have children, a new paper from the Iona Institute forecasts. The paper is called ‘Choice or Circumstance? Rising Childlessness in Ireland’. This would be the highest percentage of childless people ever recorded in Ireland and coincides with both the marriage rate and the birth rate for…
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical offers the Irish Church both challenge and hope, pointing it away from nostalgia for former certainties and away from a merely reactive accommodation to contemporary trends, according to theologian Prof. Eamonn Conway. In an analysis of Magnifica Humanitas sent to this paper, Prof. Conway (who was a Synod Expert at the…
Most of us rarely sit down and ask ourselves how we will be remembered. It is not something we are encouraged to dwell on and, for many, it feels uncomfortable. And yet, at certain points in life, after the loss of a loved one, when making a will, or during a quiet moment of reflection,…
After a year and a half, one of the masterminds behind the tragic killing of Catholic environmental activist Juan López – which occurred in September 2024 in Honduras – was finally charged and detained by authorities, giving the local Church hope that justice will be served. Adán Fúnez, formerly the mayor of the municipality of…
The Catholic Diocese of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has issued preventive measures to all Catholic parishes and communities following the declaration of an Ebola virus hemorrhagic fever outbreak as a “health emergency.” In a communiqué issued May 18, the chancellor of the diocese said Bishop Willy Ngumbi Ngengele had directed that…
Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war. Magnifica humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first…
A Benemerenti Medal was awarded to the recently retired sacristan of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in Barryroe, Co. Cork. Maura Whelton was awarded by the Pope, but the presentation was made by the Bishop of Cork and Ross, Fintan Gavin. Ms Whelton worked in the church for some 30 years, and…
Julieann Moran, General Secretary of the Synodal Path of the Catholic Church in Ireland, was a guest speaker at the Katholikentag in Wurzburg, Germany, over the weekend. She told participants that there is still great fear among some that things will change, and among others that they won’t. “But Jesus called on people not to…