Organisers have issued an appeal for at least 3,000 volunteers to assist with the planning and organising of the World Meeting of Families (WMOF) and expected papal visit to Dublin next year. More than 1,500 people have expressed an interest in helping, but twice that number is needed to form part of the operational team…
Category: News
Huge response to K&L outreach
Staff reporter A social media campaign by the Diocese of Kildare & Leighlin asking for suggestions for the 2017 parish Christmas gift has been an “outstanding success”. Bishop Denis Nulty, who made the appeal in a video, told The Irish Catholic it was the first time the diocese had tried “this way of engaging with…
Pope Francis appoints five new cardinals
Pope Francis has announced he will create five new cardinals next month, one of whom has dedicated his appointment to slain archbishop, Blessed Oscar Romero. Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez from El Salvador said he was surprised when he received a call from the Vatican at 5am on May 21, and expressed his “profound gratitude” to…
Cardinals’ disloyalty is sowing doubt – C9 chief
Ordinary Catholics support Pope Francis, the head of Pope’s ‘kitchen cabinet’ has said, criticising Cardinal Raymond Burke, who in 2014 Pope Francis removed from his position as head of the Apostolic Signura, as “a disappointed man” who “wanted power and lost it”. Describing opponents of the Holy Father as “proud” and “arrogant”, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez…
British women back abortion restrictions
Over 90% of British women want a ban on sex-selective abortion, with 70% wanting the time limits for abortion to be lowered and 59% wanting the limit lowered to 16 weeks or lower, according to a new poll of 2,008 adults conducted by ComRes. Although abortion is theoretically illegal in British law, doctors are exempt…
Give accused cardinal a ‘fair go’, bishop urges
“Justice must be allowed to run its course,” in connection with child abuse charges levelled in Australia at Cardinal George Pell, who has headed the Vatican’s Secretariat of the Economy since 2014, according to Sydney’s Archbishop Anthony Fisher. Maintaining that the cardinal is entitled to the presumption of innocence while the “impartial pursuit of justice”…
Romero murder case reopened
The murder case of Salvadoran martyr Blessed Oscar Romero has been reopened. The Archbishop of San Salvador, an outspoken critic of the violence in the El Salvador Civil War as well as poverty and corruption in the Central American country, was shot and killed while celebrating Mass in 1980, but because of an amnesty prohibiting…
African priests take up call to revitalise Irish Church
Mags Gargan and Chai Brady New missionaries will ‘inject new life’ Irish parishioners are being urged to embrace new thinking and a new wave of missionaries from overseas as a way to revitalise the Church in Ireland. Decades after Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich provoked derision in the 1980s by saying the Church in Ireland would…
World News in Brief
Pope calls for an end to violent clashes in Central African Republic Pope Francis has prayed for the end of conflict between Christian and Muslim militias in the Central African Republic. Last week clashes between the two warring sides intensified in the eastern town of Bria on May 20, which led to the deaths of…
A soldier’s song in Lourdes
Cadet Jerome Scully from the 93rd cadet class conducts the cadet school choir from the Curragh at the annual international military pilgrimage in Lourdes this week. Photo: La Caze

Mags Gargan








Courtney McGrail