A Kildare parish will join Ireland’s 14th Culture Night this year for the first time with an evening of poetry organised by their parish pastoral council. ‘Poetry to Make You Think’ will feature poems from some well-known poets including Seamus Heaney, WB Yeats, Mary Oliver, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Warsaw Shire, Emily Dickinson and Drew Dillinger.…
RTÉ star Miriam O’Callaghan has said she regularly lights a candle in her local church on the way home from her morning radio show, and prays often to the Virgin Mary. In an interview in the Sunday Independent published over the weekend Ms O’Callaghan said she didn’t always have the habit of lighting a candle,…
A German nun known as ‘Pakistan’s Mother Teresa’ has been honoured by Google with a ‘Google Doodle’ on what would have been her 90th birthday. Sr Ruth Pfau, who died in 2017, is credited with eradicating leprosy from Pakistan. Born in Leipzig in 1929, she converted to Catholicism in her 20s and was inspired to…
School resource launched to help homeless children A charity and teachers organisation have produced a new resource for primary school teachers and principals supporting students and families who are homeless or at risk, it was announced this week. Focus Ireland and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) produced the document which aims to highlight the…
Speaking as a keynote speaker at the Kennedy Summer School in County Wexford on the opening evening of the 2019 Kennedy Summer School today on the role of faith in politics, ArchbishopMartin said “The State.. will struggle if communities, like faith communities, who wish to play a full role in public life while exercising freely…
Disposable missalettes distract congregations and limit priests in their choices for Sunday Mass, liturgy experts have warned, urging parishes to get rid of the weekly missalettes. “Commercially produced missalettes that include the texts of the readings and the full text of the Eucharistic Prayer are not true aids to the Sunday celebration,” Fr Danny Murphy…
Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry has insisted that Catholic schools must continue to present a message that is counter-cultural, even when this leads to criticism. Speaking at the first diocesan religious education conference – which drew over 800 people – Dr McKeown paid tribute to the passion for Catholic education evident in teachers and other…
For the first time in over 40 years, Ireland will not have a vote at a forthcoming conclave following the omission of an Irish prelate from Pope Francis’ new batch of cardinals. At the weekend, the Pontiff announced that he would create 13 new cardinals on October 5. Ireland lost the right to vote for…
Although today may seem a time of darkness and difficulty for people without vision, prophets of doom are mistaken if they believe the Church in Ireland is condemned to a dark future, said Cloyne’s Bishop William Crean at a Mass last week to mark the centenary of St Colman’s Cathedral in Cloyne. Maintaining that today’s…
The healing of an Athlone woman with multiple sclerosis 30 years ago underlines the Eucharistic nature of the Apparition at Knock, the shrine’s rector has said. Speaking to The Irish Catholic about the medically inexplicable healing of Marion Carroll in September 1989, Fr Richard Gibbons described how Mrs Carroll had by her own account felt…
Chai Brady
Greg Daly