A leading homelessness campaigner has expressed reservations about the proposal for the State to set up a so-called ‘friendly vulture fund’ to aid people experiencing mortgage distress. Such a charitable organisation that would buy distressed loans from hard-pressed homeowners and allow them to stay in their homes would be a key step in tackling Ireland’s…
A fundraising ball for health services in Co. Clare, prompted by a young woman’s unshakeable belief in angels, will take place this May 20. The Pink Angel Ball owes its name to the description Maureen Lavery offered of the figure she said was accompanying her through her final months with terminal cancer. Maureen died in…
The shocking extent of alleged clerical sexual abuse in Australia has been revealed for the first time to the commission established to investigate such cases. Undertaking its work since 2013, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard on Monday last, during a sitting in Sydney, that 7% of Catholic priests in…
Christian leaders in the Middle East have condemned as “divisive” moves by US President Donald Trump to prioritise Christian refugees while barring others from entry to America. Responding to the president’s executive order against seven Muslim-majority nations and his signalling of preferential treatment of Christian refugees, Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo in Syria said any…
Catholic leaders in Pakistan have reacted angrily to the acquittals of all 115 suspects charged in relation to the devastating 2013 attack on the Christian community of Joseph Colony in Lahore, north-west Pakistan. The suspects had been identified as being part of a 3,000-strong mob which stormed through the district, torching at least 100 Christian…
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said there is a new “vibrancy” in the parishes of his Archdiocese of Dublin. Interviewed this week on RTÉ Radio’s Today with Seán O’Rourke in the wake of the Irish bishops’ ad limina visit to Pope Francis in Rome, Archbishop Martin was pressed on the question of lower Mass attendances since…
Claims by a controversial priest that he resembles Pope Francis are misplaced, a bestselling papal biographer has said. Speaking on RTÉ radio at the weekend, Fr Tony Flannery denied that he disagrees with fundamental Church teaching continuing: “In fact, I would suspect that I am closer to the teaching and the attitude of Pope Francis…
Local curate Fr John Carroll gives a hand in the kitchen at a ‘pop up restaurant’ in the curacy of Barntown during a breakfast fundraiser for one of six Mayoral candidates running in the Wexford parish’s charity elections, intended to raise parish funds and involve parishioners more deeply in local Church and community life.
Bishop Noel Treanor of Down & Connor has condemned an arson attack at St Patrick’s Church on Belfast’s Donegall Street which caused significant smoke damage to the building’s interior. In a statement reacting to news that someone had set fire to curtains covering the church’s Year of Mercy door last Monday, Bishop Treanor said: “This…
Experts on the translation of the Roman Missal have cautioned that any expectation of change to the translation of the Mass currently in use are “a long shot”. It comes amid reports from Rome that Pope Francis has established a new commission to review the guidelines that led to the 2011 translation, the language of…
Greg Daly
Paul Keenan
Courtney McGrail