Month: May 2019

Bishop calls for aid for plight of suffering Somalis

The apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Mogadishu, Somalia, has called on the world to “pay attention to the plight of Somali people” as they face critical food shortages because of a crippling drought. Bishop Giorgio Bertin of Djibouti, who also serves Mogadishu, said Somalis living outside the country’s central and southern agricultural regions are…

Appeal made for Mozambique cyclone victims

Catholic Relief Services is appealing for additional aid after Cyclone Kenneth struck northern Mozambique late last month, the second such storm to hit the country in recent months. “Entire villages have been flattened. Roads have been washed out. And bridges have been destroyed,” Erica Dahl-Bredine, CRS’ country representative of Lesotho and Mozambique, said on April…

From football to fanning youthful flames of faith

Vocations Sunday Supplement 2019 A former soccer international is set to form Ireland’s next generation of Dominican priests, writes Greg Daly   Every vocation story is special – God calls each of us as unique individuals with distinct tasks unique to us, after all – but among Ireland’s more recent vocation stories, that of Fr…

Scorsese and Springsteen speak about Faith’s inspiration

Rock star Bruce Springsteen and filmmaking behemoth Martin Scorsese have discussed the importance of the Catholic Faith in forming their art. In a wide-ranging conversation over the weekend in Los Angeles the two discussed their Catholic upbringings, with Springsteen saying “all my work was informed by my years in Catholic school”. “All that redemption, damnation,…

Vatican Roundup

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 reveal Pope Francis told a group of Argentine bishops on pilgrimage in Rome that although he wants to visit his homeland, current obligations impede him from fulfilling his wish, the bishops said. The Pope met with the first of two groups of bishops from Argentina’s coastal and northeastern regions on May 2 during the ad…

Who goes to Hell and who doesn’t?

Hell is never a nasty surprise waiting for a basically happy person. Nor is it necessarily a predicable ending for an unhappy, bitter person. Can a happy, warm-hearted person go to Hell? Can an unhappy, bitter person go to Heaven? That’s all contingent upon how we understand Hell and how we read the human heart.…

New pro-life campaign one year on

A poster campaign showing an unborn child at 11 weeks is intended to remind people that regardless of the law, unborn human beings are still human beings. Almost a year after the referendum that repealed Ireland’s constitutional protections for the unborn, the Iona Institute’s ‘Still One of Us’ campaign is based on a similar campaign…