The president of the Conference of German Bishops has said the Pope’s Amoris Laetitia exhortation is “very clear” and new guidelines adopted by the conference on Communion for divorced-and-remarried Catholics are in line with that. Speaking in Rome, Cardinal Reinhard Marx dismissed the ongoing row among priests and prelates on Amoris Laetitia and said he…
Pope Francis’ decision to send a ‘pastoral delegate’ to the controversial Marian shrine at Medjugorje has been welcomed by a leading Irish promoter of the pilgrimage site. Archbishop Henryk Hoser of Warszawa-Praga has been tapped as the Pope’s special envoy to the Bosnia-Herzegovina shrine, tasked with acquiring “a profound understanding of the pastoral situation” in…
Three Indian cardinals have brought the case of Fr Tom Uzhunallil, the Salesian kidnapped in Yemen in March 2016, to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, Cardinal George Alencherry and Cardinal Oswald Gracias urged Mr Modi to do all in his power to seek the release of the Indian priest, who appeared weak…
School children taking part in the Laudate Festival last week in Our Lady of Victories Church, Dublin.The Laudate Project aims to encourage children and their families across the generations to learn, recall and sing hymns together in schools and parishes. Photo: John McElroy
Anti-Semitic crimes in Britain have surged to their highest levels on record, new figures from a monitoring group have revealed. According to records compiled by the Community Security Trust (CST), there were 1,309 incidents of anti-Semitism across 2016, a figure which surpassed the previous record of 1,182 recorded in 2014. The majority of crimes against…
The actor Denzel Washington has described himself as “a God-fearing man” during an awards ceremony speech. Already a two-time Academy award winner – for his roles in Training Day and Glory – Washington added to his accolades in recent weeks with a Screen Actors Guild award for his performance in Fences, signalling a potential third…
Religious orders ‘haemorrhaging’ members, cardinal reveals The secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life has sounded a warning on the “haemorrhaging” of people from religious life. Interviewed by L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal José Rodríguez Carballo revealed that between 2015 and 2016, some 2,300 monks and nuns had left their…
Irish opposition to US President Donald Trump’s clampdown on refugees is hypocritical as long as a blind eye is turned to our own system, priests who have campaigned on the issue have said. “We can all get up in arms and rightly so about the outrageous actions of the President of the United States,” Msgr…
Stephen Rooney tries to catch snowfl akes on his tongue as he and fellow seminarians arrive for the installation Mass of Bishop John O. Barres as Bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York. Photo: CNS
The Government has been urged to streamline the process for vetting people to work in schools amidst a huge backlog in the safeguarding system. Changes in the vetting process, to ensure that people are safe to work with children, led to a “very large upsurge” in applications for such clearance, according to Seamus Mulconry General…
Courtney McGrail
Greg Daly