Staff Reporter It may have been a coincidence or a moment of singular grace, but few could fail to remark on the significance that Portugal’s win in the Eurovision Song Contest at the weekend – the first in that country’s 49 attempts – came on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima. As Salvador Sobral…
Ambar Calvo, a 20-year-old student of architecture at the University of Panama, was the winner of the competition among 103 entries for the next World Youth Day logo, to be held in Panama from January 22-27, 2019. Msgr José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta, Archbishop of Panama, said the design managed to capture the message the country…
Mark Patrick Hederman’s latest book, in which he explores the search for a new ethics for Ireland, has entered the bestsellers list just weeks after publication. The Opal and the Pearl examines sexuality in the lives and writings of James Joyce, Iris Murdoch and W.B. Yeats. Published by Columba Press, the book by the former…
Bishop Giorgio Bertin of Djibouti has urged the international community to focus on alleviating the drought in Somalia, as six million people experience severe food shortages and contend with the al-Shabab extremist group. Bishop Bertin expressed fear that the country may slip into a famine if action was delayed. “The Somali government, international community and…
The commission investigating alleged visions of Our Lady at Medjugorje has reportedly recommended early apparitions be accepted as authentic, but casts doubt upon later claims of visions. According to reports in the Italian media this week, the overwhelming majority of the 15-member body voted in favour of recognising the supernatural nature of the first seven…
Church leaders in Indonesia have criticised the government for using the country’s drugs problem as an excuse for rejecting the UN recommendation to abolish the death penalty. The recommendation, put forward at the 27th session of the UN Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, which reviewed Indonesia’s human rights situation, was rejected by Law and Human…
Over 450 teenagers took part in the spectacular diocesan youth concert ‘Awakening’ organised by Tuam archdiocese last week. Religion and music teachers from 18 different secondary schools throughout the diocese had been working on the project for the last few months, which attracted over 700 people to the Breaffy Arena in Castlebar. Creative genius Awakening…
Staff Reporter Singer Dolores O’Riordan has revealed how her mother’s faith has helped her through tough times and one of the highlights of her career was taking her mum to meet Pope John Paul II. After a whirlwind period at the tops of the charts with over 40 million in sales worldwide, the lead singer…
Youth ministries working on a national level in Ireland have reported a new openness from parish priests and pastoral councils to engage with young people. Tony Foy, Executive Director of Net Ministries, told The Irish Catholic that in recent years they have had to send their youth evangelisation teams to Scotland because they couldn’t find…
Society will be impoverished if religion is barred from influencing public life, while Faith is impoverished if it is compartmentalised and treated as a purely private activity, Archbishop Eamon Martin has said. Speaking at Norwich’s University of East Anglia on the theme ‘The Church in the Public Sphere – a perspective from Ireland’, the Archbishop…
Courtney McGrail
Mags Gargan
Greg Daly