At the heart of every institution there are frail and flawed human beings, writes David Quinn   You’ve probably seen the Netflix series, The Crown, which is a semi-fictionalised drama about Britain’s royal family. It covers the reign of Elizabeth II and follows her from the time she is a young woman and will end…

In Irish politics the main parties agree on almost everything, writes John McGuirk Speaking to the Sunday Times at the weekend, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar declared that the election campaign which is now underway would be “a once in a generation moment”, and “as important for the country as the campaigns of 1977, and 1997”.…

Voters are being asked to let the Assembly resume while major changes have been already wrought in the North without their agreement, writes Pól Ó Muirí   Nothing happens and then everything happens. After a three-year hiatus, Northern Ireland’s regional assembly is back. It had become a running, and sour joke, amongst many that members…

Questions of Faith Many Eastern religions hold to the doctrine of reincarnation – from Latin literally meaning ‘entering the flesh again’ – proponents of this idea hold that living organisms like human beings repeatedly take on a new physical form after death. In some traditions, a human can be reborn as an animal or even…

Letter from Rome Pope Francis called recent tensions between the US and Iran following the killing of General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad “particularly troubling” last Thursday, warning that they risk triggering a “vaster conflict”. Escalation between the two nations, the Pope said, risks “compromising the gradual process of rebuilding in Iraq, as well as setting…

Perhaps because Westerners tend not to take religion terribly seriously, seeing it as a private affair on par with other hobbies such as quilting or canasta, religious persecution tends to register in the Western mind only in its most spectacular form. If a bomb goes off in a church on Easter Sunday, for instance, causing…

Most of us have heard of St Thérèse of Lisieux, a French mystic who died at age 24 in 1897 and who is perhaps the most popular saint of the last two centuries. She’s famous for many things, not least for a spirituality she called her ‘little way’.  What is her ‘little way’? Popular thought…

Notebook Fr Bernard Healy I always tell visitors to Rome that they should rise early on at least one morning to visit St Peter’s Basilica when it opens, because that’s when it attracts pilgrims rather than tourists. So it was that I met an American friend and her family there just as the bells were…

When the history of Ireland in the decade of 2010-2020 is written, one picture will surely dominate: the photograph of thousands cheering outside Dublin Castle as the results of the abortion referendum were announced. Some participants were, literally, dancing in the streets. The picture has already illustrated the front cover of David McWilliams’ recent history…