More than 5,000 people including 3,000 Catholics have fled their homes in Indonesia’s Papua region following clashes between security forces and a separatist group, according to a Church official. The violence flared in Bilogai, Intan Jaya district, between security forces and members of the Papua Independence Organisation (OPM) on February 10 and was still ongoing,…
English Catholic poet Sally Read, tells Ruadhán Jones what Catholicism taught her about life and art Can you remember what you were doing this time 11 years ago? Early spring of 2010 was cold and blustery; or was it? Did I go for a trip away, was I busy with work? Seasons come and go…
The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land launched a virtual Way of the Cross project for pilgrims during Lent because the Holy Land is not accessible for a second year in a row due to the Covid-19 pandemic. When the Franciscans realised that pilgrimages would not be possible again this year, the Custody wanted to…
Maureen O’Hara: The Biography by Aubrey Malone (University of Kentucky Press, £15.00pb) Sidney Lumet: The Actor’s Director by Aubrey Malone (MacFarlane & Company, £50.95hb/£36.00pb; also on kindle) Aubrey Malone, the film critic of The Irish Catholic, is an intensive historian of the movie-making business (as it is for most people), with a sharp critical eye also on the…
Letter from Rome During the St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI years, the Vatican had a council of cardinals from around the world who allegedly oversaw its financial affairs. Members of that body routinely complained that the information they received was incomplete, that it lacked credibility and was fundamentally untrustworthy. Two of the…
Belief in Jesus Christ and God as our Creator remains absolutely compatible with science, writes Dr Brian Wilson As a young Catholic increasingly curious and hungry for more knowledge of the Faith, I find that rather than holding my faith back, my scientific training has helped to deepen it. After taking time to understand and…
Personal Profile Canon Brendan Murray’s career as a priest began in 1957 and has spanned six decades of momentous change on the island of Ireland, some for better, some for worse. “I grew up in a different age from the present one, where religion was accepted simply as a matter of fact,” Fr Murray tells…
Hundreds of Catholic nuns, priests and laypeople have joined protests in Buddhist-majority Myanmar following the February 1 coup. Ucanews.com reported that hundreds of Catholics, including dozens of nuns, marched on the streets of Yangon February 14 and recited prayers and the rosary. Youths held placards reading “Free Aung San Suu Kyi” and “We support CDM”,…
A priest from Qaraqosh helping to prepare the city’s youth for Pope Francis’s visit next month has said the fact that a Pope is traveling to the country for the first time has shown young people that the Church, which can often seem far away, is close to them. “Here in Qaraqosh, we are so…
A Parent’s Perspective I was chatting with my family about what we are all doing for Lent this year. My 10-year old son was adding more and more tough penances onto his list including daily cold showers, giving up all sweets and treats, saying more prayers and a schedule that even the most saintly would find challenging.…
Ruadhán Jones
Peter Costello
John L. Allen Jr.
Maria Byrne