The most important Irish story of last week was not the one involving Ryan Tubridy and RTÉ, nor the remarks from Michael D. Higgins about neutrality. Instead, it involved a new report on the way underage girls in the care of the State are being sexually exploited, abused and raped by ‘gangs of men’, something…
Earlier this month the story of a 24-year-old French man named Henri, who is being called the “backpack hero,” went viral for stopping a knife attack at a playground in southeastern France by chasing the attacker with a backpack. Henri was in the town of Annecy during a pilgrimage visiting France’s cathedrals when he witnessed the attack.…
Fr Mark Condon has been appointed diocesan vocations director for the Diocese of Ossory, as Bishop Niall Coll released his first clerical appointments. In addition to appointing a vocations director, the bishop of Ossory appointed a new director of ecumenism, Fr Brian Griffin, and vicar general, Fr Daniel Carroll. Meanwhile, three of Bishop Coll’s priests…
Effie Caldarola St Charles de Foucauld became one of Catholicism’s newest saints on May 15, 2022. This Frenchman was murdered in Tamanrasset, Algeria, in 1916 where he lived in a hermitage among the remote Tuareg people. At this point, eyes may glaze over. A saint who was a hermit? In the Saharan desert? What possible…
More Book Reviews 1896-2023 by J. Anthony Gaughan (Kingdom Books, €24.00/ £21.00) J. Anthony Gaughan is one of our regular reviewers and has been for many years. This is the second and concluding collection of his book reviews of all over the years since 1975. Many of these reviews appeared in these pages, but by no…
An English Catholic bishop put people at risk by promoting a priest with a history of grooming children as his cathedral dean and by cultivating an “inappropriate” friendship with a convicted paedophile, a report has said. The 57-page report by the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, the Catholic child protection agency of the Catholic Church in…
A terse two-line statement from the Vatican on June 15, announcing that Pope Francis has decided to send Archbishop Georg Gänswein back to his home diocese without any indication of a new assignment, has been widely interpreted as a papal rebuff to the 66-year-old German prelate. It is indeed striking that Francis didn’t bother with the…
The Church has a long history of celebrating martyrs – those who died “in a supreme act of love, witnessing to their faithfulness to Christ, to the Gospel and to the Church” (Pope Benedict XVI, apostolic letter to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints). That logic is somewhat incomprehensible today, though. A certain amount…
The summer solstice was a scorching day in the golf club of Birr, Co. Offaly this year. A golf team tournament was held to raise awareness for vocations to the diocesan priesthood, called ‘Play for Vocations.’ This event was part of the ‘Year of Vocations’ to the diocesan priesthood that was instituted two months ago…
The Contemporary Woman: Can she really have it all, by Michele Guinness (Hodder, £10.99/ €12.99) Author Michele Guinness is one of the Guinness clan, the Anglo-Irish brewing family of longstanding fame, but only by marriage. Back in 1999 she wrote a widely selling family history called The Guinness Spirit, which many found both entertaining and…
David Quinn
Ruadhán Jones
Peter Costello
John L. Allen Jr.