The Christmas holidays weren’t just a time for family, friends and recreation for one group of Irish people who spent the week after St Stephen’s day 7,000 kilometres from home, building a dairy in Burkino Faso. Flying out on December 27 and not returning to Ireland until January 6, Cavan optician Paul Connolly and seven…
Christians need to work towards generating a “new narrative”, as the power-sharing talks resume in Northern Ireland, Bishop Noel Treanor has said. Inspired by Pope Francis’ World Day of Peace message in which he spoke of a “contemplative gaze”, the bishop of Down and Connor said there was a connection between contemplation and responsible politics.…
Catholics and people of goodwill should be “missionaries for the cause of life”, Armagh’s Archbishop Eamon Martin has said in a new year pastoral message that has been seen as the Church’s first major intervention ahead of next year’s expected referendum on abortion. “To serve human life is to serve God,” he said, quoting Pope…
Becoming a bishop in modern Ireland is a great step into the unknown, the incoming Bishop of Ossory has said. Speaking on Kilkenny’s St Mary’s Cathedral on the announcement of his episcopal appointment, Bishop Elect Dermot Farrell said he will have much to learn in the years ahead, and that being called to be a…
Jesuits’ deaths ‘shock’ to Dublin school One of Dublin’s most prestigious schools has expressed its “deep shock” after the deaths of two long-serving staff members on the same day. Staff and students at Gonzaga College were informed on Monday of the deaths of Fr Joe Brennan SJ and Fr Kennedy O’Brien. “As you can imagine, the college community is in…
2017 was a bonanza year for Irish-based Mass streaming service Church Service TV (CSTV), with the number of parishes using the service increasing by 30%. The Bray, Co. Wicklow-based service live-streamed 59,888 scheduled events from 108 different locations over 2017, reaching some 15 million viewers from 205 countries over the course of the year. CSTV’s…
An England-based Irish nun died leaving estate worth over €10m in her will. Dublin-born Sr Francis, originally Veronica Kidney, a member of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters in Littlehampton, died in September 2016, leaving estate valued at €10,187,524, according to the Sunday Independent. Known to her four brothers and two sisters as ‘Lal’, Sr Francis was…
Peter Sutherland was a brave and highly competent Attorney General of Ireland, between 1981 and 1984, and also one of its youngest ever. He impressed civil servants and Ministers by his decisiveness and his grace under pressure, especially in dealing with difficult terrorist/extradition cases. Although his subsequent public and business career took him to live…
A series of seminars called ‘Transformer: Life in Spirit’, organised by Catholic charismatic group Living Water, will take place this month. The Life in Spirit programme, which takes place every two years, will begin on January 17 at 7pm in the Edith Stein Room, St Teresa’s Church on Claredon Street, Co Dublin, and will continue…
Ireland’s oldest Catholic mission magazine is celebrating 100 years of continuous publication this month. The Far East magazine was first published in January 1918 by the Missionary Society of St Columban, originally known as the Maynooth Mission to China. Marking the event, the magazine is running two competitions for would-be journalists aged 15 to 18…
Susan Gately
Chai Brady
Greg Daly