The body set up by the State to investigate claims of abuse in religious-run institutions has admitted that its final report dramatically over-estimated the number of children in the homes. In a statement this week, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse said the number of children housed in the institutions was approximately 42,000 –…
There is still relentless persecution of Christians who suffer across the world due to violence and intolerance, with South and East Asia becoming ‘hotspots’, a new report has found. Aid to the Church in Need’s ‘Persecuted and Forgotten’, An International report on Christians persecuted and martyred for their Faith 2017-2019’, found that some Christian communities…
Weekly collection figures at Masses in Dublin continued to fall last year, fresh figures reveal. A total of €5,854,362 was raised across the diocese for the weekly ‘Share’ collection during 2018 – down from €6,330,958 the previous year, a fall of almost 8%. At the same time expenditure from the Share collection – which supports…
Dublin communities must stand up against “evil” gangland violence and not stay silent, a parish priest has said after a young man was killed in Coolock on Sunday. Fr Bryan Shortall PP of Priorswood Parish condemned those behind the shooting of Eoin Boylan (22) in the garden of his home on Clonsaugh Avenue. He warned…
An author and Medjugorje expert has been remembered as an “amazing” and “fantastic individual” after his death following an extended illness. Finbar O’Leary brought three charter flights each year from Cork to Medjugorje in the late 1980s and continued to bring large groups with Marian Pilgrimages in May and September from Cork after the civil…
The Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life has announced it is setting up a specialised team of young Catholic leaders as advisers. The new international advisory body was established following a proposal in the final document of the 2018 Synod of Bishops on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment. The Vatican made the announcement…
Pro-government mobs have besieged another Nicaraguan parish, further inflaming tensions between the Catholic Church and President Daniel Ortega, whose Sandinista regime is targeting dissidents and attempting to stamp out dissent. Lat week, Ortega supporters tried to enter St John the Baptist Parish in Masaya, south of Managua, the capital, forcing churchgoers to barricade the doors…
The ruins of a large Catholic church which operated during Penal times 300 years ago has been discovered in central Dublin this week. It was found at the site of Apollo house, an office block on Tara Street which homelessness campaigners occupied over Christmas three years ago. The developer of the site, Marlet, was mandated…
The outgoing pro-life president of Young Fine Gael has revealed how he resorted to self-harming after coming in for a barrage of criticism for attending a conservative political event in the US. Killian Foley-Walsh (25) – whose term came to an end at the weekend – told delegates at the party’s youth conference about sustained…
Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican-based confederation of 165 national Catholic charities, has expressed sadness and outrage over incidents of child abuse by a Belgian Salesian priest who had been the national director of Caritas in the Central African Republic. Caritas Internationalis in Rome released a written statement the same day CNN published an investigative report outlining…
Chai Brady