Over 100 singers and musicians from around the country attended the 50th Annual Irish Church Music Association’s summer school in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, last week on the theme ‘Rejoice and Sing’. This year the Irish Church Music Association’s 50th summer school was preceded by a two-day jubilee conference being held in partnership with the National Centre…
The Vatican City State tribunal has ordered the opening of two tombs in a small Vatican cemetery at the request of the family of Emanuela Orlandi, a young woman who disappeared in 1983. Emanuela Orlandi, a Vatican City resident and the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared in Rome on June 22, 1983, when she…
The Editor-in-Chief and US CEO of the UK-based Catholic Herald have left the company against the background of disagreements with board members over the magazine’s November 2018 American expansion. July 4 saw longtime Herald Editor-in-Chief Damian Thompson announce on Twitter that he and the magazine’s “new owners” did not agree on the company’s “future direction”,…
Tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka rapidly declined in June, showing the severe economic impact of the Easter bombings on the Indian Ocean island nation. The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority said there were 63,072 tourist visits to Sri Lanka last month, a drop of 57% compared with June 2018, when the number was 146,828. The…
France’s Catholic Church pronounced a priest guilty of sexually abusing multiple Boy Scouts over several years and defrocked him last week, an unusually strong move that reflects France’s growing reckoning with clergy sex abuse. The ruling by a Church tribunal was the latest development in a case with repercussions that reached the highest levels of…
Francis gives St Peter’s bone fragments to Orthodox leader Pope Francis has unexpectedly given a reliquary containing what are believed to be bone fragments of St Peter to Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, an ecumenical gesture that has generated controversy among some Catholics. The Pope took the reliquary from the chapel in the papal apartments, where Pope…
Kentucky death penalty protocol ‘unconstitutional’ A Franklin County Circuit judge ruled last week that Kentucky’s death penalty regulations are unconstitutional because they fail to provide for an automatic stay of execution for intellectually disabled inmates. The Catholic Conference of Kentucky and Fr Patrick Delahanty, retired chair of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty,…
Pro-life organisations in the North have sharply criticised a vote in the House of Commons to introduce widespread access to abortion throughout Northern Ireland. Tuesday evening saw British MPs voting 332-99 in favour of an amendment to a bill connected to the Northern Ireland Executive Formation bill. The amendment was tabled by Labour MP Stella…
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Pope Francis at the Vatican today for a 55-minute private discussion. “Thank you for the time you have devoted to me,” Putin said after his audience with Pope Francis in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. It was Putin’s third meeting with Pope Francis and fifth visit to the Vatican. The…
Chai Brady and Colm Fitzpatrick The Taoiseach has apologised for incendiary comments he made yesterday which stereotyped priests as hypocrites. Speaking in Dublin Castle today, Leo Varadkar apologised for his remarks in which he compared Micheál Martin to “one of those parish priests who preaches from the altar, telling us to avoid sin while secretly…
Colm Fitzpatrick
Greg Daly
Chai Brady