Personal Profile In the year that Pope St John Paul II came to Ireland, Fr Seamus Kelly MSC (Missionary of the Sacred Heart) took a plane in a different direction. Two years to the day that he was ordained to the priesthood – 17 December 1979 – Fr Kelly travelled to spread the word in…

Restrictions may make romance more difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible, writes Jason Osborne Last year’s St Valentine’s Day probably would have been a little more ostentatious if we’d known the kind of year we were in for. Perhaps we’d have made an effort to go on a trip we’d always wanted to, somewhere suitably…

Personal Profile The Philippines has one of the largest Catholic populations in the world – a country of more than 100 million people, of which 80% are Catholic and 90% are Christian. This is the legacy of missionaries from the 1500s down to today – missionaries such as Fr Donal Bennett of Omagh, who spent…

Our physical isolation is no excuse for failing to grow in faith, writes Jason Osborne With the latest announcement from the Government confirming total lockdown until at least March 5 it is finally setting in, at least for me, that we’re not getting back to normal any time soon. That fact probably evokes a range of emotions…

Personal Profile The pandemic and lockdown have brought out many skills in lay volunteers and religious previously dormant. For some, however, it was an opportunity to build on skills they already used. Fr Eamon Roche, a former computer programmer and one of the developers of Cloyne Diocese Bl. Carlo Acutis online project, fits into the…

Writing letters, stories or poetry are widely unpractised skills with transformative potential writes Jason Osborne Last week I wrote about chess as a fun and potentially endless way to while away lockdown during these dark and dreary days. For those that didn’t appeal to, there’s another activity to consider as a coping mechanism during these…

Personal Profile For those outside the Faith, the idea that confession may draw you into Catholicism will seem counter intuitive – let alone that it can be joyful or freeing. But that’s just what it was for Anita Sheahan, who now does faith outreach for St Mary’s Dominicans in Cork. Though she grew up in…

As has been commented on endlessly, the most recent lockdown has left many of us sitting at home, twiddling our thumbs. The first lockdown was greeted with some measure of determination and grit, and people made the best of things by picking up new hobbies and skills, trying their hands at cooking, gardening, a musical…

Personal Profile A generation of philosophers, sociologists, and public intellectuals wrote off religion, declaring that we were moving into a secular age where faith would be redundant. But as Dr Michael Kirwan SJ, new director of the Loyola Institute in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), points out, this hasn’t happened. In fact, Dr Kirwan explains, many…

Wrapping up properly is the key to wrapping up warmly, writes Jason Osborne It may seem like a moot point but keeping warm is absolutely vital in the depths of winter. Working in an outdoors shop for a couple of months upon finishing college, I remember being told about the particular difficulties both Ireland and…