Staff reporter About half of the current seven vacancies in the Irish hierarchy will likely be filled by candidates proposed by the outgoing Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, according to Vatican sources. Currently there are seven of Ireland’s 26 dioceses awaiting the appointment of a new bishop. Sources in Rome this week indicated to The…

EXCLUSIVE Michael Kelly and Martin O’Brien Young Catholics need encouragement to become officers says Chief Constable The North’s most-senior policeman has called on Catholic leaders to do more to encourage young members of their community to consider becoming a police officer. In an exclusive interview with The Irish Catholic Chief Constable of the Police Service…

Staff reporter There is no possibility of women being ordained “at the present time” Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown has signalled an openness to women priests, though insisted that there is no possibility of women being ordained “at the present time”. Dr McKeown – who was appointed Bishop of Derry by Pope Francis in 2014…

Three seminarians of the Pontifical Irish College, Rome, were ordained deacons on Easter Tuesday by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, at the Church of Saint Alphonsus on the Via Merulana in Rome. Rev. James Daly (57), originally from Midleton, Co. Cork, a former parish pastoral worker and teacher, and Rev. Robert Smyth (32), from Knocklyon…

Bishop Brendan Leahy of Limerick led the tributes to Prof. Michael Hayes, former president of Mary Immaculate College (MIC), who died on Holy Saturday after a short illness. Bishop Leahy, chairman of MIC’s governing authority, said Prof. Hayes had approached his role there with untiring zeal. “With a deep conviction that Catholic education has to…

John Reid Fianna Fáil is hopeful that the persecution of Christians in the Middle East will be condemned as a genocide, in a new Dáil motion due to be put before the house before the summer. Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Fianna Fáil’s spokesman on Foreign Affairs, Darragh O’Brien, said that he is in regular…

Davog McCafferty Over 50 young people from Cappagh parish, Co. Tyrone led their parishioners into Holy WeeK Last Sunday April 9, over 50 young people from the parish of Cappagh in Co. Tyrone led their parishioners and the wider community into Holy Week with an evening of music and reflection on the ‘Way of the…

A pilgrimage in memory of Sr Clare Crockett, who was killed in an earthquake in South Amercia in 2016, will raise funds to rebuild the school where she was killed. Sr Clare, a member of the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, died a year ago this week trying to evacuate children to…

Abdi Tari Ali Letter from Somalia I was on my knees fixing IV drips to patients’ arms as they lay on the ground in a makeshift treatment centre in the town of Luuq in Gedo Province, southern Somalia. I have treated cholera before, but I have never seen anything like this in terms of volume…

Staff Reporter Bishop Francis Duffy has expressed his shock and sadness at desecration of a Longford church. It was discovered on Easter Sunday morning that St Michael’s Church, Shroid, in Longford parish was broken into and the tabernacle stolen. The church had not been in use over the Easter period when all parish ceremonies took…