Giant pandas stay chubby on bamboo diet due to gut bacteria Despite almost exclusively eating fibrous bamboo, giant pandas manage to stay chubby and healthy due to a seasonal change in their gut bacteria, a new study has shown. Researchers have found that the animals’ gut bacteria changes at the time of year when nutritious…
Bishop Donal McKeown encouraged students to “live life to the full”, as he celebrated Mass to launch Catholic schools’ week 2022. Jesus wants us “to be full of love and life”, the bishop of Derry said, adding that this “is the message that Catholic schools have always tried to communicate by word and by deed”.…
The Sunday Gospel In today’s Gospel Reading (Luke 4: 21-30) we continue last Sunday’s story of Jesus returning to his home town, Nazareth, where he preached in the local synagogue. After reading from Isaiah about the power of the Holy Spirit inaugurating a time of liberation and a new way of seeing life, he handed…
Kabir, a 15th-century Hindu mystic, writes: “What you call ‘salvation’ belongs to the time before death. If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? …. What is found now is found then. If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in…
On Dangerous Ground: A Memoir of the Irish Revolution by Máire Comerford Hilary Dully (The Lilliput Press, Dublin, €20.00) This is a fascinating diary written by a republican ‘true believer’. From 1916 until her death in 1982, Máire Comerford was totally committed to the struggle for independence as understood by many of those elected to…
Afghanistan has unseated North Korea for the dubious distinction of the most dangerous country in the world for Christians, according to a group that reports on global Christian persecution. A takeover of the government by the Taliban has made it even harder — now, impossible— to live openly as a Christian, advocacy group Open Doors…
Bishop Leahy launches new religious education programme Bishop Brendan Leahy launched Credible Catholic, a new religious education programme for Catholic Voluntary Secondary School in Ireland, January 26. Credible Catholic is “a wonderful programme that quenches the thirst of the mind, expands the outreach of the heart and points in the direction of doing many good…
In November 2021, Pope Francis launched the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, a seven-year programme for the Church to live out the call to care more deeply for God’s creation. The platform is based around achieving seven Laudato Si’ Goals across seven Church ‘institutions’ over seven years – a jubilee for the earth. The institutions include:…
Doug Beattie the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) has launched a scathing attack on Catholic schools in the North, accusing them of educational apartheid. Mr Beattie leads what is often characterised as the ‘moderate’ unionist party in the region, in contrast to the traditionally more hard-line Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). It shouldn’t be…
Dear Editor, I would agree with Fr Padraig Ó Cochláin’s sentiments [The Irish Catholic – January 13, 2020] as regards our lovely Irish language, it is the richest of all languages in its bounty of old truisms, seanfhocail agus beannachtaí. It is now an official language of the EU but my regret is that it…
Ruadhán Jones
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Michael Kelly