On Friday, American Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston issued a statement saying he has asked the heads of all offices in the Roman Curia to take down the artwork of a famed priest and artist accused of abusing dozens of adult women. The statement came from the Pontifical Commission for Protecting Minors (PCPM), for which…
Ava Westendorf On June 27, the international missionary charity Misean Cara released their 2023 press release where they described the impact they made for 1.9 million people in 52 different countries. The report claimed that they allocated €13.6 million in funding to support 321 projects in these 52 different countries. Some of these projects…
Prayer is most needed just when it seems most useless. Michael J. Buckley, one of the major spiritual mentors in my life, wrote those words. What does he mean by them? In the face of so many problems we can get the feeling that praying about them is useless. For example, in the face of…
The Captain and the Saint: The Story of St Oliver Plunkett, by Fintan Tracey (Published by Fintan Tracey, Drogheda, €10.00 plus €2.50 postage, direct from fintansfineart@gmail.com) Next year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of St Oliver Plunkett. This little book by Drogheda-based artist Fintan Tracey is the first small droplet of what will…
Watch what parents do when they pick up a baby. Whether a swaddled newborn, a smiling infant or a squirmy toddler, parents start to sway when they hold their child. Swaying is our primal rhythm, the instinct to move to calm and comfort. Slow, steady rocking can soothe a baby, relax their body, soften their…
The Sunday Gospel Ps 123:1-2, 2, 3-4 2 Cor 12:7-10 Mk 6:1-6 The Messiah, it turns out, isn’t quite who people expected. In Mark’s Gospel this Sunday, Jesus returns to his ‘native place’, his hometown of Nazareth, and when people hear him teaching in the synagogue, they can’t believe it. “Astonished” is the adjective Mark…
The Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications are digesting a robust rebuke by the Pope’s key point-man on clerical sexual abuse, the steely Irish American Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley OFM Cap. Last week, the head of the Vatican’s communications department Paolo Ruffini strongly defended the continued use by his office of the art work of Jesuit artist…
A Belgian civil court has fined two Catholic prelates after they denied a woman entry into a diaconate formation program. According to the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, the woman, Veer Dusauchoit, asked the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels to register for training as a deacon in June 2023 and again in October 2023. Ms Dusauchoit made her first request…
Every so often I am made more acutely aware of how I live in a very changing Ireland. Our country is increasingly viewed across the world as a modern progressive republic which has shaken off the destructive influence and interference of institutional religion, particularly the Catholic Church. Sometimes this change happens in very public ways…
Since their foundation, the Irish State hospitals were under the supervision and operation of Church orders which provided care grounded in an ethos dictated by Catholic social teaching. Throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, many of Ireland’s hospitals were established by religious orders, specifically orders of nuns. But as the issue of hospital ownership becomes…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser
Peter Costello