Personal Profile Dr Jessie Rogers made history recently, becoming the first lay person and the first woman to be dean of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. To her, it seemed as natural as anything – but she recognises the privilege and responsibility that comes from the appointment. “From my own internal experience of Maynooth, it didn’t…

After a long and arduous Lent compounded by lockdown, some Easter activities can breathe new life back into your house, writes Jason Osborne If Lent is a challenge every year, it has been an arduous slog this year in particular. We’ve already given up so much that we took for granted, and we found ourselves…

Personal Profile When Fr Norman Davitt SVD was nine years old – this being back in 1930 – the local parish priest came across him in a field near the Church. “He said, ‘what do you want to be’, I said, ‘I want to be a missionary’,” Fr Davitt explains. “About two years later, he…

As we approach Holy Week, a couple of activities can help families hold fast to their Lenten resolutions, writes Jason Osborne The end of Lent is rapidly approaching, and it would be all too easy to let our guard down now. In particular, children who are just beginning to grow into the liturgical life of the…

Personal Profile Fr Patrick Cunningham is the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) Co-ordinator for the Columban missionaries in South Korea. The role combines a number of his passions, particularly bettering the lot of the poor and migrants, with his calling as a missionary priest. Their human interest stories made a deep impression on…

Our ever-evolving world is bringing about newer methods of fraud by the day, so it’s important to stay alert, writes Jason Osborne An advertisement I saw recently on the internet suggesting that I could “double” my Bitcoin got me thinking about how a scam like this would make no sense to someone even 20 years ago.…

Personal Profile The family of Fr John Joe Duffy, parish priest in Creeslough/Dunfanaghy Co. Donegal, have been fishermen for generations. His father, his grandfather, his uncles – all were involved in the fishing industry in one way or another. But the priesthood was always Fr Duffy’s calling and today he combines his life and calling…

Running is a mostly cheap, easy way to get into shape quickly, writes Jason Osborne Watching our weight was the topic of last week’s article, and what better way to do that than (with a few caveats) running? Should I be running? The aforementioned caveats include if you’re recovering from injury or serious illness of…

Personal Profile In 50 years of missionary work in Zambia, Fr Michael Walsh CSSp. has seen the Church go from strength to strength. It is “unrecognisable” from the Church he first witnessed in 1971 when he arrived in the diocese of Monze after a spell as a missionary in Nigeria. Since then, the Church has…

Covid may be on everyone’s mind, but watching our weight is still essential, writes Jason Osborne Perhaps we should have anticipated it, but one of the real challenges of lockdown life has been making sure that our weight doesn’t change for the worse. There is any number of reasons why it could, from stress about…