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…

Personal Profile When Catholics are in school or college, they receive education on the Catholic Faith and have ready-made Faith communities. When they leave school for the world of work, this access to education and community can fall away. This was the experience of Patrick Edmund McCormick Williams, an Austrian Catholic who moved to Ireland…

A good night’s sleep is the firm foundation upon which to build an effective Lent, writes Jason Osborne Sleep remains a mystery right at the heart of our daily existence. We know we need it, and we have some sense of what goes wrong when we don’t get enough or when it’s of a poor…

Personal Profile Canon Brendan Murray’s career as a priest began in 1957 and has spanned six decades of momentous change on the island of Ireland, some for better, some for worse.  “I grew up in a different age from the present one, where religion was accepted simply as a matter of fact,” Fr Murray tells…

Spiritual renewal is available right under our noses this Lent, writes Jason Osborne Lent may pose a challenge for us this year – what more is there to give up? We’re already devoid of so much, it may seem that giving up more is the last thing that God could be asking of us. However,…