For the first time faith-based organisations and missionary congregations have united to call on the Government to an increase Overseas Development Aid (ODA) in Budget 2018, which is due to be announced next week. This coordinated effort has brought together the support of six of Ireland’s well-known faith-based organisations – CBM Ireland, Tearfund Ireland, Team…

Originating in the Middle East in what is now Turkey, the Church of Antioch was founded by Sts Peter and Paul and is where the word ‘Christian’ originally comes from, according to the New Testament. This developed into the Antiochian Orthodox Church. There are three parishes, in Belfast, Dublin and Kerry. The small community of…

Why the Irish Church Deserves to Die. Ballyfermot-based priest Fr Joe McDonald could hardly have chosen a more inflammatory title for his first book, calling for Irish Catholics to embrace the reality of a dying Church and work for a resurrection. The title’s not idly chosen, he says, explaining how there’s a point in the book…

A former refugee on the precipice of suicide was saved by her Church and friends after escaping war and a direct provision centre. Natalia Tsadzikidze, from Clondalkin in Dublin, escaped Georgia in Eastern Europe during a time of political tension and violence in the country. She is now a naturalised Irish citizen. Mrs Tsadzikidze felt like…

This week sees the third diocesan pilgrimage to Knock led by an American bishop in as many years, but if Wisconsin’s Diocese of Green Bay is less familiar to Irish Catholics than Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s New York or Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s Boston, it’s hardly one without a spiritual kinship to Ireland’s national shrine. The National…

Leaving behind a life destined for the military, the priest of one of Ireland’s most established Orthodox Churches pursued a life of piety despite the odds. Fr Mikhail Nasonov, of the Russian Orthodox Church, operates in Ireland at a time when Christian Orthodoxy is the fastest growing religion. Between the 2011 and 2016 census the…

Maria Garvey – whose vocation has been to untap and develop the great gifts and possibilities of persons with special needs and to empower them to transform the rest of us – remembers the moment more than 40 years ago as if it was yesterday. It changed her life forever, just as several dreams which…

The fastest growing religion in Ireland is poorly understood as our society’s growing secularism consumes public conscience. It’s been well-documented that between the 2011 and 2016 census a large amount of people no longer identify as Catholic (although it is still overwhelmingly the largest religion at 78.3% of the population). There is one Christian denomination…

There are three words that recur when you talk to Seamus McDonald, KSG, retired teacher, first-ever Irish secretary general of Unum Omnes, the International Council of Catholic Men, stalwart of the Knights of Saint Columbanus for more than 30 years and former pioneering GAA official in Co. Tyrone. They are ‘service’, ‘community’ and ‘parish’. They…

Sophie Overall “I do not believe the term, ‘late vocation’ exists,” Bro. Malachy Thompson says when he looks back on how he came to join the Cistercian monks. “God calls people to the religious life when they are ready to truly experience it.” Bro. Malachy is currently the Director of Vocations at Mount St Joseph…