Covid may be on everyone’s mind, but watching our weight is still essential, writes Jason Osborne Perhaps we should have anticipated it, but one of the real challenges of lockdown life has been making sure that our weight doesn’t change for the worse. There is any number of reasons why it could, from stress about…
Personal Profile When Catholics are in school or college, they receive education on the Catholic Faith and have ready-made Faith communities. When they leave school for the world of work, this access to education and community can fall away. This was the experience of Patrick Edmund McCormick Williams, an Austrian Catholic who moved to Ireland…
A good night’s sleep is the firm foundation upon which to build an effective Lent, writes Jason Osborne Sleep remains a mystery right at the heart of our daily existence. We know we need it, and we have some sense of what goes wrong when we don’t get enough or when it’s of a poor…
Personal Profile Canon Brendan Murray’s career as a priest began in 1957 and has spanned six decades of momentous change on the island of Ireland, some for better, some for worse. “I grew up in a different age from the present one, where religion was accepted simply as a matter of fact,” Fr Murray tells…
Spiritual renewal is available right under our noses this Lent, writes Jason Osborne Lent may pose a challenge for us this year – what more is there to give up? We’re already devoid of so much, it may seem that giving up more is the last thing that God could be asking of us. However,…
Personal Profile In the year that Pope St John Paul II came to Ireland, Fr Seamus Kelly MSC (Missionary of the Sacred Heart) took a plane in a different direction. Two years to the day that he was ordained to the priesthood – 17 December 1979 – Fr Kelly travelled to spread the word in…
Restrictions may make romance more difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible, writes Jason Osborne Last year’s St Valentine’s Day probably would have been a little more ostentatious if we’d known the kind of year we were in for. Perhaps we’d have made an effort to go on a trip we’d always wanted to, somewhere suitably…
Personal Profile The Philippines has one of the largest Catholic populations in the world – a country of more than 100 million people, of which 80% are Catholic and 90% are Christian. This is the legacy of missionaries from the 1500s down to today – missionaries such as Fr Donal Bennett of Omagh, who spent…
Our physical isolation is no excuse for failing to grow in faith, writes Jason Osborne With the latest announcement from the Government confirming total lockdown until at least March 5 it is finally setting in, at least for me, that we’re not getting back to normal any time soon. That fact probably evokes a range of emotions…
Personal Profile The pandemic and lockdown have brought out many skills in lay volunteers and religious previously dormant. For some, however, it was an opportunity to build on skills they already used. Fr Eamon Roche, a former computer programmer and one of the developers of Cloyne Diocese Bl. Carlo Acutis online project, fits into the…