While tens of thousands of Mayo supporters descended on Croke Park, as towns, villages and crossroads emptied in hope that a 75-year wait for Sam Maguire might finally end, anticipation had already reached a fever pitch a week earlier in the tiny rural community of Tooreen, near the Roscommon border. For while Mayo is, and…
Knock was always part of Fr Richard Gibbons’s life, even before it became his work. Growing up in Mayo, his family came each year – mum, dad, six children and, sometimes, his grandfather – everyone piling into a small minibus. This was the 1970s, when the Basilica itself was newly built. “My memory of it,…
Catholic activists are accusing Mexico’s Supreme Court of judicial activism when it comes to expanding access to abortion in the Latin American nation. Over the past few months, the Supreme Court has handed down a series of major rulings aimed at ensuring broad access to abortion services for pregnant women in Mexico. Pro-life advocates in…
It was Palm Sunday, 2019 and the words from Luke’s Gospel were echoing in the heart of the Cavan priest. “Into your hands, O Lord…” The following day he would celebrate requiem Mass for a relative – before heading to Dublin to meet the Papal Nuncio. In his forty years as a priest in Kilmore…
The Irish Dominicans: 800 Years, 1224–2024 traces a history of preaching and scholarship through centuries of suppression, martyrdom, decline and remarkable revival. Its author, Fr Terence Crotty OP, initially thought the book might take him about two weeks. The 800th anniversary of the Order’s arrival in Ireland was approaching, and it had been suggested that…
I am young enough to remember the Ireland of my childhood. I am one of Bertie’s babies, born just before the turn of the millennium, raised in the long glow of the Celtic Tiger’s era of greed and excess. My earliest memories are of cranes on the skyline and a country that seemed to be…
Gana, a refugee from Kharkiv—one of the Ukrainian cities hardest hit by Russian attacks—found safety in Ireland not only from the war, but also from her abusive husband. Now she fears she and her five-year-old daughter, who has autism, could be left without a home. Gana is deeply concerned by the Irish Government’s plans to…
As some pilgrims commuted to Knock for the Annual Grandparents Pilgrimage, and others climbed Croagh Patrick on Reek Sunday, many travelled to Dublin to watch the GAA Football All-Ireland final in Croke Park, where Mayo was playing Kerry, and won the championship for the fourth time – the first in 75 years. Thousands of pilgrims…
Senator Sarah O’Reilly’s journey to the Seanad was unexpected and accidental, she says. The first Aontú representative to be elected to the Seanad explained in an interview with The Irish Catholic that she doesn’t think of herself as a “career politician”. Recalling her life as a single mom with four kids on social welfare in…
On June 9 of 1974, Fr Martin Casey was ordained in St Peter’s Seminary in Co. Wexford. “I thought maybe it might be a way of being helpful to people in some way or another and bringing people closer to God,” Fr Casey told The Irish Catholic about his journey to priesthood. “That thought has…
Martina Purdy
Renata Steffens