Bishop Leo O’Reilly has announced the appointment of two priests from Nigeria to parishes in the Diocese of Kilmore among this year’s new clerical appointments. Fr Addison Okpeh and Fr Peter Okpetu are both members of the Missionary Society of St Paul of Nigeria and they are the first Nigerian priests to receive appointments in…

Over 1,000 young Catholics are expected to descend on the Cistercian College in Co. Tipperary next week for the annual Youth 2000 Summer Festival. Youth 2000 is an international movement of young people called to spread the Good News and the cornerstones of its spirituality are the Eucharist and the rosary. The festival, which combines…

Experts in religious education have challenged claims that the quality of the subject in Irish schools needs closer scrutiny, pointing out that an article arguing this admits that there is a lack of serious research on the subject. ‘Religion, Education, and Religious Education in Irish Schools’, by UCC professors Áine Hyland and Brian Bocking, recognises…

Without directly naming Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan has challenged the candidate’s anti-immigrant rhetoric in an op-ed piece in the New York Daily News.   Recalling how his students had disbelieved him when he had said that nativism – the policy of protecting the interests of native-born inhabitants against those…

After almost six decades of Antarctic ministry, the Church has decided to withdraw from the world’s least populous continent. Since 1957, New Zealand’s Christchurch diocese has been sending five priests to Antarctica every summer, where they served at the Chapel of the Snows, the world’s southernmost church, and four smaller chapels. Numbers attending Mass at…

Canadian bishops have objected to a draft law facilitating assisted suicide and euthanasia in the province province of Seskatchewan, warning of how it would endanger society’s weakest and oldest members. Criticising the bill’s euphemistic language, the bishops objected to terms like “medical assistance to die,” “assisted death” and “to die with dignity.” Such language, they…

The Russian-backed separatist rebellion in Ukraine has plunged the country into its worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, according to a Ukrainian bishop who warns that “millions of refugees” could soon head west to escape starvation. “Huge numbers are now caught between hammer and anvil,” according to Kharkiv-Zaporizhia’s Auxiliary Bishop Jan Sobilo, continuing, “the…

The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church has called for prayer to mark the anniversary of the conquest of the Nineveh Plain by the so-called ‘Islamic State’, when hundreds of thousands of Christians were forced to abandon their homes and flee towards Iraqi Kurdistan. In a letter to Pope Francis and the bishops of the…

A calendar of mercy The Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation has published a full schedule of events for the coming Jubilee Year of Mercy, beginning with the opening of the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Over a dozen individual celebrations are scheduled for the…