The View As a people we had come to take our way of life with all its freedoms for granted – the right to freedom of speech, of thought, of conscience, of privacy, of family life, the right of freedom of assembly…so many rights. For many of us they just were our rights and we…
The reconstruction of a church in Beirut severely damaged by the massive explosion that rocked the city this summer is a sign of hope to the area’s inhabitants, said a local priest. Fr Nicolas Riachy is pastor of the Church of the Saviour in Beirut, Lebanon. He told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN)…
O Shining Light: Old English Meditations for Advent and Christmas, introduction and commentary by Jacob and Mamie Riyeff (Gracewing, £9.99) In the Venerable Bede there is a passage where a pagan Saxon king likens the life of an individual to the flight of a small birds through the warm and lighted hall of a Anglo-Saxon home,…
Letter from Rome Within the last few days, two completely separate lawsuits have been filed in two different countries that somehow involve the Vatican. In the United States, four alleged sex abuse victims of ex-cardinal and ex-priest Theodore McCarrick are suing the Vatican, while in Italy Cardinal Angelo Becciu has filed a $12 million defamation…
A Dominican sister was shot in the leg as her humanitarian relief team came under gunfire from paramilitaries in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state. Dominican Sister María Isabel Hernández Rea, 52, was struck in the leg November 18 while attempting to take food to a group of indigenous Tzotzil people displaced from a hamlet in the…
Medical Matters Our lives have changed in so many ways as a result of the pandemic, which has impacted negatively on health-related behaviours such as alcohol consumption, smoking, diet and physical activity. This will not come as any surprise given that surveys suggest that up to half of the population have experienced moderate levels of…
The move will be felt as a “great loss” by many but is a sign of changes in the way people express their faith, according to a local historian. The Belfast-based confraternity met for the last time on Sunday, November 22, 123 years after it began in July 1897. Belfast historian Brian McKee believes that…
In that brief intermezzo over the summer between what turned out to be the first and second great surges of the Covid-19 pandemic, Pope Francis held a series of appropriately socially distanced, “virtual” conversations with his premier English-language explicator about what he believes needs to be done for the world to be better than it…
Bishop Brendan Leahy has appealed to the public to stay diligent over the next 10 days, encouraging continuing compliance with public health regulations. The Bishop of Limerick said that while weariness has set in, the Faithful must keep their eyes on saving lives. “The Covid-19 crisis has hit us out of the blue. We didn’t…
Two European Catholic commissions warned that Arctic warming is intensifying competition over the region’s resources and urged tougher policies to protect its biodiversity and indigenous communities. As exploration, mining, investment and military activities increase, predatory practices also can increase, said the Brussels-based Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, or COMECE, and Justice and…
Nuala O’Loan
Peter Costello
John L. Allen Jr.
Dr Kevin McCarroll
Ruadhán Jones