A disability-activist group are calling on legislators to ensure that abortion on disability grounds is “outlawed” in Ireland, by making an amendment to the current abortion bill. Disability Voices for Life, which represents more than 100 parents and people living with disabilities, have appealed to Simon Harris to amend the bill. Otherwise, they say “their…
‘Ireland needs bridges rather than borders’ Ireland’s border communities fear border structures and barriers becoming magnets for violence in the wake of a hard Brexit, the Primate of All-Ireland has said. Speaking to The Irish Catholic about his trip to Poland this month for the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, Archbishop Eamon…
Investment to help vulnerable women would be the best way of commemorating the experiences of women who spent time in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, according to the author of an important study of two Dublin laundries. “Dare I say that the most fitting memorial to women and girls who found themselves in Magdalene laundries, for however…
The restoration of a statue of Ireland’s leading 19th-Century temperance campaigner to Dublin’s O’Connell Street last week has been welcomed by Ireland’s Capuchin community. The statue of the Tipperary-born Capuchin, Fr Theobald Mathew, who was instrumental in starting Ireland’s Pioneer movement, was removed from the capital’s main thoroughfare in 2016 to facilitate work on the…
A new group of nuns is hoping to bring fresh spirituality and hope to a Cork town after the community lost the presence of the Presentation Sisters in 2002. Four young sisters of the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, hailing from the US, were installed in Mitchelstown over the weekend by Bishop…
In the past few years, the moral legitimacy of euthanasia has become a hot-button issue and even in Christian circles, opposition to its implementation has been waning. Indeed, only last week did former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu say that terminally ill people should have the right to a “dignified assisted death”, following a murder charge…
With this year’s plenary gathering of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe being held in Poland, solidarity seemed an obvious theme, alluding as it did to the trade union founded by Lech Walesa in 1980 that was crucial in bringing about the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe. “The theme of solidarity…
The Government should explain whether it believes it ought to be legal to publish anything at all of a blasphemous nature, a former attorney general has said. Speaking in a debate in the Seanad about next month’s referendum on repealing the constitutional ban on blasphemy, Senator Michael McDowell said that rather than simply repealing the…
There has been a “great increase” in attacks and kidnapping of missionaries by radical Islamists and poverty-stricken youths over the last 20 years, the Irish-born Superior General of the Society of African Missions (SMA) has said. This comes as an Italian missionary of the order was kidnapped last week in southwest Niger by an armed…
Despite ongoing deadlock in Stormont blocking a new suicide prevention plan, a specialist priest has said anyone “who is struggling” will be supported. Fermanagh-based Fr Cathal Deery, who trains clergy and chaplains in dealing with suicide, admitted it is “frustrating” that the Protect Life 2 strategy could not be implemented as it needs to be…
Greg Daly
Chai Brady
Colm Fitzpatrick