“Everybody’s got a hungry heart,” says Christopher West, quoting Bruce Springsteen and observing in an echo of St Augustine’s opening observation from the start of his Confessions that “we all have a deep ache and hunger in our hearts for something”. All set for a speaking tour of Ireland early next month, West, the best-known…
What does the end of the world look like? Matthew, Luke, Timothy and the Book of Revelations all address this question in the Bible. Hollywood answers it with movies like World War Z, Deep Impact and I am Legend. Novelists portray this era in The Road, Z for Zachariah and Children of Men. For me the closest I have ever seen to…
Nostalgia is a false path to the future, former New Zealand PM Jim Bolger tells Greg Daly Courage, for former New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger, is crucial if people of faith want to bring their distinct outlooks and gifts to politics. Currently Chancellor of the University of Waikato just outside Auckland on New Zealand’s…
For more than 50 generations, families have carried forward the faith of their families who made their way to Lough Derg Lough Derg offers families a unique connection with their ancestoral family whose spiritual footsteps down the generations awaits them in this sacred island. The Lough Derg Pilgrimage season connects us with the flame of…
People dread the thought of being without their iPad or smartphone for even a few minutes, and with constant stimulation it’s rare anyone takes time to reflect. Or so one nun thinks, as she takes action to stop people becoming “overcrowded and overwhelmed” by offering a place where Facebook and Twitter are not allowed. Sr…
Greg Daly describes Pope Francis’ brief but moving pilgrimage to Fatima If doubts remained in any hearts about how Pope Francis thinks over Our Lady, his words at a candlelit ceremony last weekend in Fatima’s apparition chapel should have banished them. “I feel that Jesus has entrusted you to me,” he said, thanking the gathered…
Greg Daly explores one of the Portuguese appartions’ most intriguing aspects In the decades following the apparitions, Fatima was mainly known, like Lourdes and other Marian sites, as a place of healing. However, in her 1941 memoirs, Sr Lucia wrote about how during Our Lady’s third apparition, she gave the children a message in three…
Greg Daly examines the lives of the Fatima visionaries Remarkable though the Fatima apparitions were, last weekend’s canonisations owed less to the visions witnessed by Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto than to how their lives were transformed by their encounter with Our Lady. “The apparition of the Virgin Mary was an occasion, but it has…
Those who had wondered what miracle prompted the canonisations last weekend of Ss Jacinta and Francisco had their questions answered ahead of Pope Francis’ arrival in Fatima. Speaking at a press conference at the shrine, the Brazilian parents João Batista and his wife Lucila Yurie described the miraculous healing of their son after a terrible…
Stephen Bullivant Stephen Bullivant considers how the Fatima visions sought to speak to the modern world Sunday, May 13 1917 would prove an auspicious day, both for the Catholic Church, and for the whole tumultuous course of the 20th Century. In the Sistine Chapel, Pope Benedict XV consecrated Eugenio Pacelli as archbishop, prior to sending…
Greg Daly
Chai Brady