Bishops need to show the Pope they are up to the challenge of leadership, writes Cathal Barry

Television icon Oprah Winfrey has credited her church upbringing for being the catalyst for her successful global media career. The American talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist, was born into poverty in rural Missisippi to a teenage single mother. Speaking in a video to promote her new series Belief, which is about the “ongoing…

The Church’s refusal to allow the divorced and remarried receive the Eucharist can cause people to turn from the Church and God himself, Berlin’s Archbishop Heiner Koch has told the Synod of Bishops. In his three-minute address to the gathered bishops, Dr Koch said the Church’s theological arguments “do not silence the questions in the…

A parish appeal in Belfast to raise funds to help alleviate the suffering of refugees fleeing war in Syria has raised an incredible €70,000.  Sparked by frustration at what they saw as a poor political response to the crisis, the Redemptorist community at Clonard Monastery undertook fundraising collections at the end of September, which was…

Attitudes to gay people in Africa are unlikely to change overnight, even though bishops have publicly defended the inherent dignity of people with homosexual tendencies, Accra’s Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle has said. Claiming that negative attitudes against homosexuals have existed for “millennia” in Africa, the Ghanaian archbishop said “it would be a bit deceptive to think”…

Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, currently in Rome for the Synod on the Family, called for prayers throughout the diocese for the Traveller families affected by the “heartbreaking” fire in Carrickmines. Ten people, including children as young as six months, died in a fire at a Traveller site on Saturday morning. The parish priest of the…

Precious Life, the largest pro-life group in the North, has opened a new pregnancy care centre in Belfast. Speaking at the opening of Stanton Healthcare Belfast on Tuesday, Precious Life’s director, Bernadette Smyth said, the centre will “offer a much needed alternative” to the Marie Stope Clinic at no cost “because we believe that women…

A filmmaker is seeking to raise €40,000 to enable the distribution and promotion of a film about Japan’s last Irish nun. Thanks to your Noble Shadow tells the story of Jennie O’Sullivan who, aged just 23, left Ireland as Sr Paschal, a member of the Infant Jesus Sisters, to spend the next 75 years in…

Ben Burke and son Ben Jr from Foxford, Co. Mayo with their pet sheep Polly and hen Penny at the annual blessing of the pets for the feast of St francis of Assisi which took place over the weekend at Knock Marian shrine. Photo: Gerard Smyth

The military chaplaincy has launched a prayer book app specifically for those working in the Defence Forces and their families. The app is based on the Mingy Prayerbook, which was published in the 1990s to provide personnel with prayers and reflections during training that they could fit into a pocket or wallet.  Available from the App Store,…