After 107 days, I was overwhelmed to be able to attend Mass on Monday [pictured]. The joy was palpable after the long Lent and Eucharistic famine we have been living. Coronavirus is still very much with us, and we must continue to approach the Celebration of the Eucharist with caution. I’m also conscious of the…

Documents obtained by The Irish Catholic this week offer something of a glimpse behind the scenes on the relationship between the Church and the State since Covid-19 restrictions began back in March. Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has been the key go-between on behalf of the hierarchy. His years in the Vatican’s diplomatic service has…

The Belfast-born writer and theologian C.S. Lewis once opined on the saints who live amongst us. “Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth,” he wrote. “Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly recognisable: but others can be recognised. Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices…

One of the great hurts that parishioners share with me over a cup of tea when I speak at missions and novena (remember when we used to be able to do things like that?) is the disappointment that their adult children don’t bring their own children up in the faith. Grandparents often feel marooned with…

It’s 16 years since the then Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly painted the image of ‘tiptoeing’ back to the Church. “It would be good if we recognised the new religions of sex and drink and shopping for what they are and tiptoed back to the Churches,” she told the Céifin conference in 2004. New research carried out…

Time and again we see from the pages of the Bible that a time of crisis is also a time of opportunity. Whether in the story of the Israelites or in the New Testament, God sets before his people a choice when it comes to every crisis: to adapt and grow, or to perish. Human…

“I thought my first cappuccino after 54 days was amazing, but being at Mass after 10 weeks was even better,” a Roman friend said this week. Churches in the eternal city were re-opened for public Masses this week after a long Lent. “It finally felt like Easter,” my friend wrote. Italy has been devastated by coronavirus.…

Like many people, I am acutely feeling the absence of Sunday Mass. Parishes are doing their best, and there is a wealth of creativity in many of the Masses that are being streamed online. But it isn’t the same – not really. I am blessed where I live that churches remain open as places of…

I n our Catholic tradition we often speak of the communion of saints as that spiritual union between the members of the Church on earth and those of us who have died in God’s friendship. Death is not the end for us, and those who have gone before us remain a part of us and…

I feel blessed under lockdown that within the allocated two kilometres from my home in Dublin are two beautiful churches which remain open for prayer despite this pandemic. As part of the permitted daily exercise, I always make a short visit to either Holy Cross in Dundrum or the Church of St John the Evangelist in…