Priest defends decision to deny judge Holy Communion The Church in western Michigan is defending a priest’s decision to deny Holy Communion to a judge in a same-sex marriage. Judge Sara Smolenski says Fr Scott Nolan privately informed her on about a week after receiving Communion from him at St Stephen Church in East Grand…
The number of Irish people who say they pray every day has increased and presents an opportunity for the Church to grasp, according to experts. The recently-published European Social Survey 2018 found that while Mass attendance continued to decline, there was an increase of 2.1% in the number of people who say they pray every…
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…
Chai Brady