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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Seriously ill children from rural Ireland could die en route to the proposed new national children’s hospital in the heavily-congested city centre of Dublin, a bishop has warned. Bishop Phonsie Cullinan, the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, is backing a grassroots campaign to urge the Government to move away from the current proposed site at…
The bells of St Brigid’s Church in Ballintrillick, Co. Sligo, rang 108 times to mark the funeral of Ireland’s oldest person last week, with each chime marking a year of her life. Elizabeth Gallagher, who was buried on March 28, became the oldest person in Ireland last December, and was “very proud” of the fact,…
The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart have offered to house a family of refugees at their retreat centre in Cork. Fr Michael Curran MSC, leader of the Myross Wood community, is currently working alongside the Irish Red Cross to put the suggested relief plan into action. Myross Wood House has already been inspected by an…
Pope Francis’ decision to switch Vatican oversight for shrines and sanctuaries to the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation has been welcomed by the priests who run Ireland’s principal shrines. Until this weekend, shrines and sanctuaries came under the jurisdiction of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, but on Saturday, April 1, the Pope transferred them…
Mags Gargan
Greg Daly