The Christian Brothers have continued to defend their decision to sell pitches worth €18m beside a Dublin school, as they are under legal obligation to do so. Despite backlash from the Board of Management of Clonkeen College in Deansgrange and the local community they have made no indication they will renege on their legal commitment…

Proposals to bar oversubscribed Catholic schools from prioritising admissions based on religious grounds are untenable and make no legal sense, a leading expert on the Irish Constitution has said. Minister for Education Richard Bruton last week announced plans to deny Church-owned primary schools the right to include religion as a selection criterion when oversubscribed, stating…

A bishop has warned people not to mistakenly buy sympathy cards under the impression that they are purchasing pre-signed Mass cards. Sympathy cards, which look very similar to Mass cards and can even have a chalice on the front cover, offer to have the “repose of the soul” of someone remembered in a priest’s daily…

The Bishop of Kerry has suggested that parishioners should carpool to Sunday Mass in neighbouring parishes as one way to address the shortage of priests in the diocese. In publishing the diocesan list of changes of priests, Bishop Ray Browne acknowledged that a sixth parish, Knocknagoshel, is now without a resident priest and that means…

Parking restrictions have been recently enforced in the car park adjacent to Raheen Church in Limerick following multiple complaints from Mass-goers. Limerick City and County Council has erected signage in the area indicating it is now governed by parking bye-laws which require people to pay, with failure to do so resulting in a €40 fine. Cllr James…

A decision that Northern Ireland’s abortion laws are best decided by Stormont has been described as “very welcome” by Pro-Life groups. Three judges in the Court of Appeal ruled unanimously that the current abortion laws are not incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), and that legislators should be tasked with dealing with…

The Primate of All Ireland has described the extent of Christian persecution worldwide as “shocking”, while calling on Irish Catholics not to be afraid to witness to the Faith in an “aggressively secular culture”. Speaking at the annual festival of St Oliver Plunkett in Drogheda, Archbishop Eamon Martin said the persecution of Christians “remains widespread…

The Church must apply ‘mercy’ to families, particularly those that find themselves in difficulty, including second unions, a leading theologian has said. Speaking ahead of a major gathering in Limerick next week that will be attended by the cardinal chosen by Pope Francis to present Amoris Laetitia – the papal letter on the ‘family’ –…

Fr Bernard Healy On Saturday, Pope Francis appointed a man familiar to many Rome-educated Irish clergy, namely Jesuit Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. From 1984 until 2008 he was on the theology faculty of the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome where most of the…

Government plans for a referendum on abortion next year reveal consultation exercises as charades, members of the Oireachtas committee on the rights of unborn have said. Responding to reports that Health Minister Simon Harris has asked officials at the Department of Health to begin drafting legislation to allow for abortion on demand during the first…