Bishop Brendan Leahy has said it would be “great” for Christian unity if Churches could agree on a common date for Easter. The Bishop of Limerick told The Irish Catholic it would be a “truly great thing to have a common date for Easter”. Noting that Pope Francis had suggested recently that he would like…

A well-known priest has accused the Irish hierarchy of lacking the “dynamism” that is needed to renew the Church here. Fr Paddy Byrne told The Irish Catholic that the bishops “have to account for their own dynamism and if they are going to question it at a parish level they must question it among themselves”.…

Level of homelessness in Ireland is “out of control” Ireland’s “out of control” homelessness crisis makes commemorations around the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising seem hollow, according to leading campaigner Fr Peter McVerry SJ. Speaking as it was revealed that there are now more than 5,000 homeless people in Ireland, Fr McVerry told The…

The Government has accused the United Nations of failing to implement its own rules to protect vulnerable minorities, including Christians, in the Middle East. Dara Murphy, the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, told the Seanad that “the Government believes the UN and the Security Council, in particular, have not…

A Co. Mayo parish priest is on a mission to improve his parishioners’ health with an Operation Transformation fitness programme under the slogan ‘pray together, weigh together’. Based on the health and fitness programme airing on RTÉ One, 52 parishioners in Tourmakeady are going for regular walks and fitness classes with their PP Fr John…

An American football team should visit the site of the only officially-recognised Marian apparition in the United States after pulling off a so-called ‘Hail Mary pass’, a local bishop has said. Pointing out that the community of Champion in Wisconsin’s Green Bay diocese is home to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, Milwaukee’s…

Cardinal Sean O’Malley will lead the first ever chartered pilgrimage from the Archdiocese of Boston to Knock this summer, following a transatlantic pilgrimage from New York last year. The Boston pilgrims will travel to Ireland’s National Marian Shrine by an Aer Lingus operated chartered flight to Ireland West Airport Knock on July 14. The highlight…

Staff Reporter Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has warned that the artwork displayed at the national seminary in Maynooth gives the “wrong impression” of what the Church’s message is. Noting that the long corridors of St Patrick’s College are “tapestried” with large portraits of bishops, Dr Martin claimed that most of them were “of little or any artistic…

A senior Fine Gael official has dismissed as “legal fiction” the view that it may be possible to amend the Constitution to retain the general right to life for unborn children, but to allow abortion in the cases of unborn children with life-limiting conditions. Writing in a personal capacity in The Irish Catholic this week,…

Cork school to launch Catholic Schools Week Mount Mercy College will be the first school in Cork to host the national launch of Catholic Schools Week next Monday (January 25). Catholic Schools Week will run from Sunday, January 31 to Saturday, February 6 and is an all-Ireland annual event which invites Catholic schools to give expression in a special way to…