Who were the 75% that said no to the family and care referendums? Have the government parties lost confidence in their offering and their politics? After a decade of consensus and coalition building, the overwhelming defeat of the apparent centrist position in the 2024 family and care referendums provided a bloody nose to the…
Julieann Moran reflects on how walking together is shaping renewal in the Irish Church, as the Pre-Synodal Assembly in Kilkenny approaches On Saturday, October 18, 2025, the Church in Ireland will gather in Kilkenny for a Pre-Synodal Assembly, an important moment on the road towards the National Synodal Assembly in 2026. Delegates from dioceses, religious…
The Central Statistics Office in Dublin recently declared that Ireland’s population could reach seven million by the year 2057 under high migration projections. The population currently stands at just over five million. However, it reached approximately eight million for the whole island before the famine in 1841. Considering the size of the population before the…
Political generosity in the upcoming presidential election Dear Editor, In the interest of democracy, local authority council elected members should be allowed a free vote when it comes to the nomination of presidential candidates. They should not be fettered by political party loyalties which block potential candidates. The constitutional requirements were never intended to be…
“On a hill far away, stood the old rugged cross”, so begins the well-known and much-loved hymn that takes us to the shadow and the light found on and through Calvary. In this month of September, we celebrate the Feast Day of The Triumph of The Cross. It is more accurately referred to as The…
Divisive, dangerous and provocative – that’s how some in the media described American activist Charlie Kirk, after he was shot dead in Utah just days ago. “The answers he gave were astonishing!” said one Sky TV commentator, who cited his “outlandish” pro-life position and Kirk’s “dislike of abortion” – as if killing a child in…
It was hardly a great advertisement for Ireland when Pope Leo, as Bishop Robert Prevost, reported that when visiting this country he had been physically attacked in the street. This had occurred probably in 2007 (he came to Ireland twice, once in 2005 and then again two years later). “Never in my life have I…
There is a good chance you had never heard of Charlie Kirk, the young American political activist, until he was murdered in America last week while addressing students at an open-air event at a university in Utah. Only those who follow US politics very closely will have heard of him. I was somewhat aware of…
I do hate saying this as it sounds very pretentious but I need to make reference to a book I wrote. The one before the last one was called Dipping into Life. A number of people came up to me afterwards and said, ‘I love that book’ and some would go on to say, ‘I…
During his Sunday Angelus recently with pilgrims gathered in St Peter’s Square, Pope Leo gave us a call to love when he said, “Let us where we are, never miss an opportunity to love. This is the vigilance that Jesus asks of us, to get used to being attentive, available and sensitive to one another,…
Martina Purdy
Mary Kenny
David Quinn