Due to its impact on young Catholics in Africa, fundamentalism will be a topic that bishops from East Africa prioritize in their talks with other delegates during the synod’s intervention sessions. More than 300 delegates, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, sisters and laypeople are expected to attend the Oct. 3-28 Synod of Bishops, which will meet…
The Pope has ordered the laicisation of Fernando Karadima, a Chilean priest convicted in 2011 of the sexual abuse of minors. He had previously been sentenced to a life of prayer and penance. Pope Francis made the “exceptional decision” to dismiss Karadima from the clerical state, “in conscience for the good of the Church”, according…
‘Ireland needs bridges rather than borders’ Ireland’s border communities fear border structures and barriers becoming magnets for violence in the wake of a hard Brexit, the Primate of All-Ireland has said. Speaking to The Irish Catholic about his trip to Poland this month for the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, Archbishop Eamon…
Investment to help vulnerable women would be the best way of commemorating the experiences of women who spent time in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, according to the author of an important study of two Dublin laundries. “Dare I say that the most fitting memorial to women and girls who found themselves in Magdalene laundries, for however…
How to Defend the Faith Without Raising your Voice: Civil responses to Catholic hot-button issues by Michael Kelly and Austen Ivereigh (Columba Press, €14.99) A couple of generations ago, one could have safely assumed that most Irish people shared a set of common values. Even if one didn’t necessarily fully subscribe to the Catholic worldview, the culture was…
The restoration of a statue of Ireland’s leading 19th-Century temperance campaigner to Dublin’s O’Connell Street last week has been welcomed by Ireland’s Capuchin community. The statue of the Tipperary-born Capuchin, Fr Theobald Mathew, who was instrumental in starting Ireland’s Pioneer movement, was removed from the capital’s main thoroughfare in 2016 to facilitate work on the…
A new group of nuns is hoping to bring fresh spirituality and hope to a Cork town after the community lost the presence of the Presentation Sisters in 2002. Four young sisters of the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, hailing from the US, were installed in Mitchelstown over the weekend by Bishop…
It is no idle boast – it is not a boast at all – but I think I know as much about the damage that alcohol can do as any man or woman alive. Alcohol abuse devastates lives – and afflicts every family member connected to the abuse. It can drag a man or a…
The View Martin Mansergh It used to be said that whenever the British came close to solving the Irish Question the Irish changed the question. The Good Friday Agreement addressed the causes of conflict in Northern Ireland, but now it is the British who have changed the question. A border poll post-Brexit would…
Many women don’t feel an immediate bond with their new-born baby, writes Colm Fitzpatrick You receive the fantastic news that you’re pregnant and will finally be a mother. For nine blissful months you feel baby kicks and eagerly await the arrival of your child. Delivery day comes, and with little effort and no medical…
Chai Brady
Greg Daly
David Quinn
Mary Kenny
Colm Fitzpatrick