Initial negotiations have begun between the Catholic Church’s Order of the Holy Sepulchre and Bill Gates’s Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts chain about the potential opening of a luxury hotel near St Peter’s Basilica, catering to the wealthier tourists and pilgrims visiting the Eternal City. The property in question is the Palazzo di Domenico della…
Not everything can be fixed or cured, but it should be named properly. Richard Rohr said that. James Hillman suggests something similar when he wrote that a symptom suffers most when it doesn’t know where it belongs. Some of these seemingly contradict each other, but all of them merit some thought. I leave them for…
Notebook The 24 April edition of Chicago Catholic (the Church paper in Chicago) carried news of clergy appointments that were to come into force this summer. Fourteen priests were appointed to new parishes with strange names, places like ‘St Pius X and St Leonard’, ‘St Agatha and St Martin de Porres’, ‘Ascension and St Edmund’.…
Dear Editor, I find it unbelievable that media commentators and politicians are objecting to the words “clinically appropriate” in the constitution for the new National Maternity Hospital. Seriously, are we proposing that this State sponsored maternity hospital carry out ‘clinically inappropriate procedures’ even ones leading to fatal consequences? There is a word for deliberately killing…
Editor’s Comment Pope Francis is increasingly showing the signs of ageing, at least physically. The 85-year-old Pontiff has been increasingly moved around the Vatican in a wheelchair in recent weeks. He now regularly appears with a walking cane aimed at taking the weight off his knee which has been ailing him in recent months. According…
Hopefully, all parties involved will do their best, and in good faith, to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol problem, and the vexatious bureaucracy involved in transporting a Marks & Spencer comestible from Cheshire to Belfast. Bertie Ahern – who brought so much to the peace process – says that with enough patient negotiation, it can…
The Vatican response to the arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen should concern us all, writes David Quinn In February 1949, the head of the Catholic Church in Hungary, Cardinal József Mindszenty, was sentenced to life in prison by the country’s communist government, one that had been put into power by Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s communist dictator.…
The excusable doesn’t need to be excused and the inexcusable cannot be excused. Michael Buckley wrote those words commenting on St Peter’s triple betrayal of Jesus. Here’s the context. Peter had betrayed Jesus in his most needy hour, not out of malice, simply out of weakness. Now, facing Jesus for the first time since that…
Dear Editor, In all the hullabaloo around the proposed new National Maternity Hospital (NMH), the entire thrust of most mainstream media commentary is an obsession to ensure that a key part of the work of the maternity hospital will be ending the lives of the most vulnerable human beings – unborn children. The Religious Sisters…
Notebook I have lived and worked in a predominantly rural parish in the midlands for the last ten years. In that time, we have had national debates about many issues including same-sex marriage, abortion, Brexit and the demise – and possible resuscitation – of the Celtic Tiger. All of those issues and many more have…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly
Mary Kenny
David Quinn