With months to go still until his March 5-8 trip to Iraq, Pope Francis began shaping his message, urging a network of Catholic charities to help Christians who have fled the region to return home if they want to do so. In a video message sent to a Vatican-organised summit focused on the ongoing humanitarian…
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s a pious axiom that doesn’t always hold up. Sometimes the bad time comes and we don’t learn anything. Hopefully this present bad time, Covid-19, will teach us something and make us stronger. My hope is that Covid-19 will teach us something that previous generations didn’t need to…
Notebook Dear Santa, You were mentioned in the Dáil recently and I heard the Irish Ambassador to Finland say she had spoken to you and that you reassured her that you will be travelling this year. Good news, for sure. You are, as you told her, an “essential worker”. Locally I have heard children speak…
The American international magazine Time has designated 2020 as the worst year ever. This, arguably, emblemises the mentality of ‘presentism’ – that is, the notion that what we are experiencing right now is the worst (or the best) ever, without allowing for the perspective of history. There have been many worse years: we could start…
The View For the last 14 years, I have raised our children at home and educated them. It is wonderful, fulfilling, and often exhausting. I have a loving, supportive husband who – since the children were very small – has taken them almost every Saturday to allow me some time off and headspace. I like…
We should dream certainly but we should also be realistic, writes David Quinn Let Us Dream is the latest book by Pope Francis. More accurately, it is a distillation of conversations the Pontiff had with Catholic journalist and writer Austen Ivereigh, who will be familiar to many readers of this paper. Pope’s reflections Let Us…
We should urge both health authorities and pharmaceutical companies to make available vaccines in no way tainted by abortion and tissue collection, writes Dr Helen Watt Covid-19 vaccines have been hailed as the cavalry appearing on the skyline to save us all from a pandemic that, in combination with alarmed responses, has devastated countries around the…
Letter from Jordan Dale Gavlak The worsening coronavirus pandemic and economic conditions in Syria are further deepening poverty and hardship for Christians, who find themselves trapped in a political stalemate, religious freedom advocates say. “The situation is becoming worse, people are calling me every day and asking for help. I speak with people in Aleppo,…
Prison sentences handed down last week for three young pro-democracy activists, in tandem with the arrest of media tycoon Jimmy Lai, has been largely read as the latest chapter in China tightening its grip on Hong Kong and eviscerating the principle of “one nation, two systems” under which the territory was transferred to Chinese control…
When I was a young boy growing up in a Catholic community, the catechesis of the time tried to inspire the hearts of the young with stories of martyrs, saints, and other people who lived out high ideals in terms of virtue and faith. I remember one story in particular that caught my imagination and…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Mary Kenny
Maria Steen
David Quinn
John L. Allen Jr.