Category: Feature

New altar for the ages is blessed in Sallynoggin

There was “great excitement” in a Dublin parish as their long-awaited new altar was dedicated by the Archbishop of Dublin. After decades of using a temporary altar over 300 parishioners gathered for the ceremony in Sallynoggin parish earlier this month. Parish secretary Rachel Higgins said: “There was great excitement in the parish and an overwhelming…

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When community comes to life

This month saw the culmination of festivities at St Conleth’s church, where the people of Newbridge’s parish came together on his Feast Day to mark the 1,500th anniversary of his death and to celebrate the vibrant parish life that still exists in his name today. The weekend of celebrations began with Mass where Kildare and…

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A garden full of opportunities
Vocations Sunday Supplement 2019 Joining a religious order could be the best decision you ever make, writes Colm Fitzpatrick   There’s an old, well-known joke about how different religious communities are constantly competing with one another, vying to decide which order is the best. It goes something like this: a Franciscan and a Dominican were…
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From football to fanning youthful flames of faith
Vocations Sunday Supplement 2019 A former soccer international is set to form Ireland’s next generation of Dominican priests, writes Greg Daly   Every vocation story is special – God calls each of us as unique individuals with distinct tasks unique to us, after all – but among Ireland’s more recent vocation stories, that of Fr…
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‘…On this rock I will build my Church”

Students give a day-to-day reflection on a recent pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi by the Catholic chaplaincy at Queen’s University, Belfast, led by Fr Gerard Magee   DAY 1 – 
Oisin McHugh We started off our day with a trip to the St John Lateran Cathedral in Rome. Known as the “Mother and head of…

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‘Embrace’ Pope’s word on climate change
Realising that the planet is on the brink of a precipice that can only be stopped by the actions of humans who need an “ecological conversion”, is an idea that can’t be understated according to several prominent academics. Over the weekend more than 100 people gathered in the Dromantine Conference Centre in Co. Down for…
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Walking the walk…
Tours can open up our Irish history in new ways, writes Colm Fitzpatrick   Historical and religious tours can often be reduced to drab, monotonous circuits where bland facts are reeled off one after the other, with the enthusiasm of a teetotaller at an open bar. Putting a twist on this all too common experience,…
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The council that is to come
Vatican II is only just beginning to bear fruit, Colm Fitzpatrick is told   No other event springs faster to mind when conversing about radical changes in the Church than the occasion of the Second Vatican Council; an event which continues to reverberate in the hearts and minds of Christians today. With well over 50…
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Responses to the Pope’s Christus Vivit exhortation
Ger Gallagher Pastoral Co-ordinator, Archdiocese of Dublin There are a few things that resonated. The whole thing that the Church needs the momentum of young people – the line, “And when you arrive where we have not yet reached, have the patience to wait for us” – that was fairly melancholic in saying that we…
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