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…

The finances of Dublin archdiocese have never been so transparent, writes Greg Daly On the face of it, comparing this year’s financial reports from the Archdiocese of Dublin with its Share Newsletters of previous years is a case of comparing apples and oranges. Previous practice in the archdiocese entailed the publication, typically in April, of…

Mags Gargan examines the continuing popularity of parish missions Parish missions were a common feature in the Irish Church up until about the 1960s and for many the idea of a mission brings up the old stereotypical image of a judgmental, hellfire preacher. However, parish missions today are a gentler, communal affair and while they…

Ahead of his historic beatification ceremony, Mags Gargan looks at the life of Fr John Sullivan Ireland will host its first ever beatification ceremony this weekend, when Fr John Sullivan SJ will be named Blessed on May 13. (Up until the papacy of Benedict XVI beatifications tended to take place in Rome and the Pope…

It’s been just over a year since the US-based Hilton Foundation announced it was awarding a grant of $290,000 (€268,000) to Vocations Ireland, and Margaret Cartwright, director of the organisation, has had her hands full in the meantime. Explaining that the umbrella group that supports vocations directors from Ireland’s religious congregations has just received the…

Bishop Phonsie Cullinan tells Greg Daly about the new National Vocations Office Ireland has lagged behind other countries in the promotion of priestly vocations for several years, according to Waterford and Lismore’s Bishop Phonsie Cullinan, chairman of the Irish bishops’ Council for Vocations, but that’s set to change this month with the establishment of the…

Greg Daly considers the recommendations of Ireland’s latest ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ If there remained any plausible claim that Ireland’s so-called ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ is a genuinely representative body, rather than, as Senator Michael McDowell put it last year “a ridiculous sham … convened on the basis of a polling company’s random sample of persons”, it was demolished…

The debate over Ireland’s new maternity hospital is really about abortion, writes David Quinn Nuns in Ireland have been so stereotyped in Irish public debate that they have been reduced to the role of the villain in an old-fashioned Hammer horror movie. The archetype of this villainous nun is the character played by Geraldine McEwan…