I have learned a new word in time for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell, the leader of Catholic emancipation: eleutherophilia. It means a passion for liberty; but the term can also refer to a mental disorder: a manic or mad irresistible craving for freedom. This mania – a dangerous belief that…

Pope Leo, Pope Francis never took holidays. It became a pet peeve of mine. I felt that he was giving bad example and reinforcing the kind of culture where people could never truly relax. He did reduce his number of work commitments and make time for meeting and corresponding with friends in the summer. However,…

If there is one person who should be involved, at the highest possible level in Middle East peace talks, it is surely the Leitrim-born mediator Oliver McTernan. Oliver is often heard on RTÉ and on the BBC commenting on the agonising Gaza-Israeli conflict. His balanced, measured, and knowledgeable words are much respected in the broadcast…

It was once known as Vinegar Hill, or Little Dublin, a colonial outpost settled by Irish immigrants, fleeing the famine. Having carried their faith and their culture to what is now the village of Markham, Ontario, Canada, these Irish men and women built a little Catholic church in 1862 on Rouge Street. They named it…

A comment from the great Italian writer, Umberto Eco, has always stayed with me. Eco is most famous as the author of The Name of the Rose, a sort of intellectual murder-mystery set in a monastery during the Middle Ages and made into a movie starring Sean Connery as a sort of monk-detective. I don’t…

My friend’s son worked for a while as a tour guide in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast. Two Americans got off the bus in the dockland area and were quite perplexed: “But where is the Titanic?” they wanted to know. They were genuinely shocked to hear it had sunk. The Titanic looms large in Belfast,…

The week before last, I made a pilgrimage to Rome with my husband and children, in the company of two other families. Shepherding 22 children around the streets of the eternal city in 35-degree heat was a challenge not for the faint-hearted. Despite some disappointments (we didn’t get very close to the Pope), and setbacks…

The crowds poured out of the trains arriving in Dublin last Saturday, evidently making for the ‘Gay Pride’ march in the capital. The rainbow colours were everywhere, and costumes ranged from the exotic to the unremarkable, and in age from tots to grannies. The atmosphere reminded me that there is a kind of joyfulness in…

Unless you were hiding under a rock recently, you will at least have seen some of the images from the wedding of former TV presenter, Lauren Sanchez, to Jeff Bezos, the founder and head of Amazon and the world’s richest, or second richest man, depending on how these things are calculated. The wedding took over…