Churches must find practical solutions to the energy crisis, says Fr Peter O’Reilly, who questioned the ethics of heating large, inefficient churches,. Churches can keep their energy costs down and tackle fossil fuel use by using parish halls or centres instead of churches “created for numbers that no longer exist and impossible to heat”, the…
An official portrait of the late Nobel Peace Prize winner and former SDLP leader John Hume was unveiled in Westminster on Monday. Commissioned by the Speaker’s advisory committee on works of art, the portrait was painted by Co. Down-based artist Colin Davidson. It was based on drawings he’d done during sittings with Mr Hume in…
Pope Francis promised reporters traveling with him to the Gulf nation of Bahrain that his November 3-6 visit would be an “interesting trip.” Thanking the more than 65 reporters, photographers and television-camera operators on the plane with him from Rome, the Pope added that he hoped the trip would include “good news”. However, he said, the…
Political turmoil is robbing people of hope, writes Chai Brady Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry diocese has warned there is a danger that politics “becomes a game for parties who are squabbling” as the North continues to lack an executive six months after elections. A new election is yet to be announced but is unlikely…
Padre Pio relics to visit Down and Connor The Diocese of Down and Connor will bring the relics of St Padre Pio to the diocese from November 6-11 to mark 20 years since he was declared a saint. Pope St John Paul II canonised Padre Pio in 2002, drawing crowds of an estimated 300,000 to…
What’s the point of Christmas without Christian symbols like a crib, Dublin-based priests have asked after the cancelling of the traditional nativity scene outside the Lord Mayor’s residence in Dublin. The live animal crib, which has been a fixture outside the Mansion House since 1995, will be replaced by a “winter wonderland” in plans announced…
A new prayer campaign hopes to encourage people to come forward and provide fresh information about the so-called ‘disappeared’ – people who were abducted, killed and secretly buried by paramilitaries in the North. Fr Joe Gormley of Derry Diocese, who works closely with the families who are desperate to give their loved ones the dignity…
Fr Willie Doyle SJ is one step closer to sainthood after Bishop of Meath Tom Deenihan opened October 25 the canonisation cause of the Irish World War One chaplain serving in the British army. Servant of God Willie Doyle was born in Dalkey, Co. Dublin in 1873, and entered the Jesuits in Rahan, Tullabeg, Co.…
A 22-year-old man appeared in court this week charged with stabbing a priest six times in his home in Waterford. Indian priest Fr Bobit Augusthy of the Order of St Camillus, originally from Kerala, was hospitalised after the attack in his house which he shares with two other priests near Waterford Regional Hospital in Ardkeen.…
Staff Reporter US scholar of the ancient world, Thomas Cahill, best known for his lauded How the Irish Saved Civilization, died at the age of 82. Mr Cahill’s wife, Susan, said the cause of death was a heart attack. How the Irish Saved Civilization brought to widespread popularity the theory that Irish monks preserved western…
Ruadhán Jones
Chai Brady