Bishop Brendan Leahy of Limerick led the tributes to Prof. Michael Hayes, former president of Mary Immaculate College (MIC), who died on Holy Saturday after a short illness. Bishop Leahy, chairman of MIC’s governing authority, said Prof. Hayes had approached his role there with untiring zeal. “With a deep conviction that Catholic education has to…

Davog McCafferty Over 50 young people from Cappagh parish, Co. Tyrone led their parishioners into Holy WeeK Last Sunday April 9, over 50 young people from the parish of Cappagh in Co. Tyrone led their parishioners and the wider community into Holy Week with an evening of music and reflection on the ‘Way of the…

Abdi Tari Ali Letter from Somalia I was on my knees fixing IV drips to patients’ arms as they lay on the ground in a makeshift treatment centre in the town of Luuq in Gedo Province, southern Somalia. I have treated cholera before, but I have never seen anything like this in terms of volume…

The Church has thrown its support behind an ambitious new film series aimed to energise young Christians and help them tackle doubts they might have about their Faith. The eight-part NUA film series was launched at Dublin’s Gonzaga College last month ahead of the release of census figures that show significant declines in numbers of…

The most striking thing about the 2016 census is how it points to the resilience of Irish Catholic identity, a leading Church number-cruncher has said. According to the census, Catholics now make up 78.3% of Ireland’s population, down from 84.2% five years ago, with the number of Catholics in the country having dropped by 132,000,…

A group of former republican prisoners has asked the bishops to clarify the rules around placing Irish tricolours on coffins inside churches during funerals in the North. Flags and paramilitary trappings have been banned since the former Bishop of Derry, Dr Edward Daly took the decision in 1987 when shots were fired over the coffin…

Irish bishops have emphasised the need for the Government to use every effort to protect religious minorities from persecution, following the latest bombings targeting Christians in Egypt. Bishop John McAreavey, Chair of the Bishops Council for Justice and Peace, said the bombings at two Coptic Christian churches in Cairo on Palm Sunday were “clearly a…

‘Friends of Cuan Mhuire’, a new nationwide network to support people in recovery from addiction, opened a centre in Tralee, Co. Kerry last week. Bishop Ray Browne, who made the initiative one of the special projects for the ‘Year of Mercy’ in the Diocese of Kerry, said he hopes that the new centre at 11…

Catholic schools and religious education experts have criticised State proposals to remove religious education as a core element in Ireland’s primary school curriculum. Under a consultation document issued by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, no space is explicitly set aside in school curriculum for religious education, in contrast to the current curriculum, introduced…

An iconic statue of the crucified Christ has been reinstated outside a church on Belfast’s Falls Road. The 20-foot ‘Passion of Christ’ figure fell from the cross outside St Paul’s Church in February. Clerics and parishioners acted quickly to move the statue and used a trolley to take it from the scene. A spokesperson for…