The summer has come and I am on holidays on a small island off the west coast of France. The landscape is a flat patchwork quilt of salt marshes criss-crossed with bicycle paths. Cycling from one village to the next, it is the landmark of the church spire that draws you to your destination. Village…

Mother’s Day is a very old tradition – linked both with ‘Lady Day’, being the Feast of the Annunciation, and ‘Mothering Sunday’, when apprentices had time off to return to their mother-village. Father’s Day is of more recent coinage, launched in America in 1910, by one Sonora Smart Dodd, wishing to honour her father, who…

A national assembly or synod which listens to the experience of the laity could help alleviate the current crisis the Irish Church is facing, a prominent Jesuit has said. Fr Gerry O’Hanlon SJ said that the Church in Ireland is at a “crisis” point and that a national assembly or synod which draws together religious…

A call by the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore to roll out Alpha courses across his diocese has been warmly welcomed by Alpha’s Teresa Cronin. “To have the Church from the top behind it has been an answer to prayer,” she told The Irish Catholic.  “Alpha is part of a bigger vision of renewal, moving…

Fr. Bernard Healy I recently celebrated early-morning Mass for a group of American seminarians. They were heading to the airport so as to fly back to their home dioceses after spending the past semester living in the Pontifical Irish College and attending classes at Rome’s Angelicum University. During the homily I reminded them of the…

Plans to allow homeowners with solar panels to sell excess electricity back to the grid with a potential to earn €400 a year have been dubbed a “positive step”. Trócaire’s Niamh Garvey, who is head of policy and advocacy, welcomed the proposal which is going to cabinet this month. “The announcement around solar panels and…

Elise Harris  At nearly a month since his passing, the legacy of Jean Vanier is far from forgotten, and continues to live on in friends and colleagues who say the Canadian theologian not only impacted their lives personally, but also changed theology and the way the Church views the human person. “He was such a…

Inés San Martín In his first direct comments about the case of Theodore McCarrick, Pope Francis said that “about McCarrick I knew nothing, obviously, nothing, nothing”. “I said it many times, I knew nothing, no idea,” Francis said in an interview with Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki. Speaking about the allegation made by Archbishop Carlo Maria…