Cindy Wooden From the beginning of his pontificate 10 years ago, Pope Francis set out to reform the structure and attitudes of the Roman Curia and knew he also had to reform the Vatican’s financial system and stewardship of resources. One month after his election, he announced he was forming an international Council of Cardinals…

Justin McLellan When Pope Francis greeted the thousands of faithful gathered in a rain-soaked St Peter’s Square March 13, 2013, he quipped that his brother cardinals looked almost to “the ends of the earth” to find a new bishop of Rome. The end of the world, in this case, was Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Pope…

It is often said that we are our truest selves when we are happy, comfortable and surrounded by those we love and trust. During each of the nearly 30 trips I made with Pope Francis, there was always a memorable moment when his true self would come out to play. Early on, we would recognise…

Gina Christian Pope Francis has evoked both praise and protest for his outreach to LGBTQ persons during his decade-long papacy, as he has offered warmth and welcome while upholding the Catholic Church’s teaching on human sexuality. “My experience of Pope Francis has been hope-filled and also frustrating,” Dr Ish Ruiz, a gay theologian and post-doctoral…

Recently our bishop, Paul Dempsey, wrote a pastoral letter for Lent. He was encouraging the work of parish pastoral councils throughout the diocese. Some weeks earlier, he celebrated Mass in the cathedral in Ballaghaderreen, where parish pastoral councils from around the diocese were commissioned. It was a wonderful occasion with more than 300 people in…

One of the regrettable trends now emerging in several countries across the western world is the erasing, or sometimes even disappearance, of history. I notice such lamentations on French media, where commentators deplore the decline of historical knowledge. It’s also perceptible in Britain and the United States. Douglas Murray, the British author of The War…

It was great to see the plight of Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez brought to public attention by The Irish Catholic recently. The story arose from a parliamentary question posed by Carol Nolan, TD. Deputy Nolan does sterling work drawing attention to unpopular causes, along with many of her fellow Independent and minority party TDs. Nonetheless,…

One way or another, we are going to be living in a future that is increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, writes David Quinn Over the past couple of decades we have already seen how machines such as smartphones and tablets have become so all-pervasive. These are very different from the earlier sorts of machines that…

Talk of Irish joy in Prague must have seemed strange to delegates given that the only voices represented were of hurt, anger and alienation, writes Fr Andrew McMahon   While its ‘final document’ is — at time of writing — still awaited, the European stage of the Synod on Synodality effectively concluded with the widely…

Ireland has never quite grasped the significance of the vision and thought of St John Henry Newman writes Deacon Brett Lockhart The death late last year of Fr Ian Ker, (1942-2022) the world’s leading authority on the life and thought of Cardinal John Henry Newman may have gone largely unnoticed in Ireland, but his definitive…