Negotiations between Kylemore Abbey and a top Catholic University in the US to establish a third level educational facility at the Benedictine monastery are “close” to reaching an agreement. Kylemore Abbey Abbess Sr Maire Hickey, OSB, told The Irish Catholic she was “engaged in ongoing negotiations” with the University of Notre Dame du Lac, Indiana,…

“His head is like a game of thrones, in a good way,” says Pope Francis’ former press secretary Fr Guillermo Marco, in a television documentary exploring what shaped the Pontiff we know today. In the Would You Believe? special ‘Pope Francis – The Sinner’ Mick Peelo interviews Jesuits, friends, contemporaries and students in Argentina of…

The head of the Holy See’s peace council has praised the Church in Northern Ireland for its work to bring peace to the North. Speaking at Belfast’s annual St Brigid’s lecture, Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said after many years in which “images of violent conflict have flashed…

Bishop says some comments “misquoted or quoted out of context”

The first of a series of interviews organised for young people, which examined the issue of suicide, drew a large crowd in Long Tower parish, Derry. Students from local schools are pictured with (l-r) Angela Hayes (speaker); Liam Coyle (Derry footballer); Alan Hayes (speaker), Richard Moore (pastoral council); Fr Brendan Collins and Bishop Donal McKeown.

Former Vatican chief prosecutor Charles Scicluna has been named as the new Archbishop of Malta. Born in Toronto, Canada in 1959, Dr Scicluna began working in Rome as Substitute Promoter of Justice for the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura before becoming Promoter of Justice for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).…

Four Irish families will travel to the UN in Geneva next week to launch a global campaign aiming to end the use of the term ‘incompatible with life’ and to seek better care for families whose children are diagnosed with a life-limiting disorder in the womb. Tracy Harkin from Cavan, Sarah Nugent from Laois, Grace…

Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, who has died aged 97, has been honoured in death by a host of American luminaries. “His deep and abiding faith in a loving God, and in the power of our shared humanity, led him to join the first-ever United States Civil Rights Commission, and join hands with (the Rev. Martin…

A new initiative in a Co. Tyrone parish is reaching out to people ‘where they are at’ by offering faith discussions in a local pub. Fr Ryan McAleer and Bosco McShane of the Siolta Retreat team launched ‘Faith on Tap’, based on the ‘Theology on Tap’ programme popular in the US, in McAleer’s pub in…

An archbishop in Central African Republic has likened the people of his country to Israelites wandering in the desert, and urged them to use the pope's planned autumn visit to escape from their “prolonged crisis”. In a Lenten pastoral letter, Bangui’s Archbishop Dieudonne Nzapalainga, president of the national bishops’ conference, said that “the harsh ordeal”…