Mags GarganOver 1,000 young people, who are currently participating or have received the Pope John Paul II Award in the last ten years, gathered at Knock Shrine on April 5 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the award. When the award was launched in Derry in 2006 by the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Lazarotto, it was…
Category: News
Groups urged to promote World Meeting of Families
Marriage and family outreach movements with international aspects have been urged to promote next year’s World Meeting of Families. Speaking at a gathering of 17 groups convened by the Irish Bishops’ Conference’s Council for Marriage and the Family, Fr Tim Bartlett, Secretary General of the World Meeting of Families 2018, thanked the assembled representatives and…
Out and About
Courtney McGrailKerry diocese celebrates Ceiliúradh na nOg Over 350 students, representing 14 post-primary schools from throughout the diocese, attended the Ceiliúradh na nÓg celebration day in the Brandon Hotel in Tralee, Co. Kerry. The students presented their projects which they carried out over the academic year. The purpose of Ceiliúradh na nÓg is to develop the…
Priests have role in getting answers on the ‘Disappeared’ – primate
Priests could have a role in sharing sensitive information which would help families left grieving after the Troubles, the Primate of All Ireland has said. Archbishop Eamon Martin told a Mass for the Disappeared in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, there are people on all sides who carry secrets, “memories of their own involvement in…
Pro-lifers call for SDLP suspension answers
Greg Daly
Pro-life campaigners in the North have called on people to push the SDLP to explain why they have suspended three councillors who abstained from voting in a motion that called for women not to be intimidated by “harassment” from anti-abortion campaigners. The Belfast City Council vote, calling for councillors to condemn any such harassment across…
Are Francis and Trump at odds over Syria too?
John L. Allen Jr.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made waves this week with a blistering statement about reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons in a recent attack on a rebel stronghold, calling it “brutal, unabashed barbarism.” Tillerson’s rhetoric raised eyebrows, given that just last week, during a visit to Turkey, Tillerson had said…
Church, Faith and liturgy in ‘serious crisis’, says top cardinal
Modern Masses have caused disaster, devastation and schism in the Church, the head of the Vatican’s liturgy department has said. In an address sent to a conference in Germany, Cardinal Robert Sarah, who heads the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, said the Church is currently undergoing a “serious crisis” underestimated by…
Return, Iraqi bishops urge displaced Christians
Iraqi Christians driven from the Nineven Plains by the so-called Islamic State are looking forward to moving home, with Church leaders having assembled a taskforce to spearhead a vast rebuilding programme. The Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, formed from bishops from the Syriac Catholic, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldean Catholic Churches, will oversee the planning and rebuilding of…
Time for civil disobedience after Venezuela’s judicial coup
Venezuela’s bishops have described a Supreme Court decision to eliminate the country’s National Assembly as “morally unacceptable”. Saying Venezuela’s Catholics cannot remain “passive, frightened, or hopeless”, they have called for peaceful protests and civil disobedience to the government of President Nicholas Maduro. The abolition of the assembly, which opposition parties have dominated for over a…
Priests continue to fear false allegations
Unfounded claims of abuse remain a grave fear for many Irish priests, while clergy often distrust their bishops, according to the minutes of two meetings of the Association of Catholic priests last month. Safeguarding was a central issue at the ACP South meeting, which considered the rights of clergy when faced with allegations. “Solicitors feel…