The View   The appointment of Paolo Ruffini as head of the Vatican Dicastery for Communications should be an occasion for rejoicing, as the respected 62-year-old journalist is the first layperson to be appointed as prefect of a Vatican department. The historic nature of the appointment may be overshadowed because the post has not gone…

It could take years before we know if the papal trip has been a success, writes David Quinn   And so, all 500,000 tickets available for the Pope’s Mass in Phoenix Park next month have been taken up. That is an impressive number by any reckoning, and especially in today’s very secular climate. An additional…

Criticism of Cardinal Kevin Farrell is misplaced, writes Greg Daly   “Priests do not have experience to prepare people for marriage, says Vatican Cardinal,” read a headline in the Irish Times early last week. Summing up and quoting some key points in an interview with Cardinal Kevin Farrell in the Irish bishops’ Intercom magazine, the…

In a new interview, Libero Milone, the lay Italian financial expert who was named the Vatican’s first-ever Auditor General in 2015 and who resigned under murky circumstances two years later, asserts that a Vatican criminal investigation against him has ended with no charges being filed. Speaking to the Italian state TV network RAI, Milone said his lawyers…

Huston Smith, the renowned commentator on world religions, submits that you should not judge a religion by its worst expressions, but by its best, its saints. That’s also true in terms of judging the merits of vowed, consecrated celibacy. It should be judged by its best, not perverse, examples, as is true too for the…

The Notebook   I remember the night Pope Francis walked out on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s. My heart sank. He looked old to me and a little lost in his new clothes. I don’t know what I expected but somewhere, in the back of my mind, I had an image of a younger man…

From her own point of view, Josepha Madigan’s decision to lead prayers in Mount Merrion church recently – in the absence of a priest – was a bold career move which has brought benefits. She will have realised this when she saw comments on social media, and letters to the papers from people saying they…

The View   Although the battle to save the Eighth Amendment was lost, there is still work to do which could result in the saving of many babies’ lives. As I write this article, the draft legislation which will decriminalise abortion in some circumstances has not yet been published. When it is published, there will have…

An inauthentic Church peddles ‘cheap grace’, writes David Quinn   In any given society and cultural moment, Christianity faces certain temptations. In part of Eastern Europe, for example, Christianity is coming to be identified again with national identity. This happened in the run-up to World War I and World War II, with disastrous consequences. In…