When Fr Ciarán O’Callaghan CSsR gets up every morning and looks out from his bedroom window in Clonard Monastery he sees, just metres away, the tall and forbidding so-called peace wall that separates Catholics and Protestants in west Belfast. The wall, one of more than 40 such structures in Belfast and of well over 100…

“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…

Junno Arocho Esteves When it comes to Marian apparitions, the Catholic Church takes a prudent approach that focuses more on the message than the miracle. Supernatural phenomena, like the alleged miracle of the Sun in Fatima, Portugal, nearly 100 years ago, are not the primary factors in determining an apparition is worthy of belief. In…

In recent years apparitions at Kibeho in Rwanda and Champion, in the US state of Wisconsin, have been approved by their diocesan bishops, the former having taken place in 1981-1982, the latter in 1859. Despite devotion on a vast scale, alleged apparitions at Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been rejected by local bishops. Major Marian sites…

Fr Dwight Longenecker Rational explanations for Fatima admit the supernatural, argues Fr Dwight Longenecker Atheists love to mock miracles, and the miracle of the Sun at Fatima is one of their favourite objects of derision. The high priest of the atheists, Richard Dawkins dismisses the miracle of the Sun as a mass hallucination. He writes…

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…