Three Irish missionaries were recognised for the humanitarian assistance they provided to the people of Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s and ‘80s. At the invitation of Ambassador of Chile Ricardo Hernández, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins attended the ceremony in recognition of Fr Brendan Forde, Fr Desmond McGillicuddy and Fr Liam…
Judge dismisses Texas monastery’s lawsuit against Fort Worth bishop A Texas judge has dismissed a Carmelite monastery’s civil lawsuit against Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson. Without comment, Tarrant County District Court Judge Don Cosby, presiding from Fort Worth, issued a ruling June 30 granting the Fort Worth Diocese’s motion to dismiss the monastery’s complaint, which…
Tobias Winright My family and I moved to Maynooth from Saint Louis, Missouri, in the United States nearly a year ago. We had visited Ireland a dozen times during the past two decades, and we were attracted to the beauty of the Emerald Isle and the hospitality of its people. Also, although it had experienced…
A prayer book belonging to the priest who sheltered King Charles II has gone on display in the famous Moseley Old Hall in Wolverhampton. Fr John Huddleston’s personal missal is almost 400 years old, and was purchased by the conservation charity National Trust at auction. It’s believed that the missal, published in Paris in 1623,…
Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos has been sent back to prison, July 5 after negotiations between the Nicaraguan bishops and the government of dictator Daniel Ortega broke down, Nicaraguan news sources reported. According to ACI Prensa, Bishop Álvarez, of the Diocese of Matagalpa, in Managua, was released Monday, July 3 but returned to custody…
Audrey Bryce The movie is better than the book is one sentence that is not generally spoken. How often is a film considered better than the book on which it was entirely based? Well, in 2018 authors Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn delineated an inspiring story of mass spiritual revival in their novel Jesus Revolution…
Thomas McCarthy * * * Song of the Goldfinch, by John F. Deane (Veritas, €19.99 pb/ £17.50pb) Have we forgotten how universal our secure and graceful Irish Catholic life once was? Well, that is, as the song goes, if your Dad was rich and your Mom was beautiful – true wealth, of course, was then to…
Dear Editor, Given the highly selective and well-orchestrated nature of information from our national broadcaster it seems to me that there is a grave danger that the general public are being duped into missing a central point in this whole controversy. The top-up payments to Ryan Tubridy are a minor issue in comparison with the…
The revelation that children in State care are being targeted by sexual predators due to a lack of national policy and training on exploitation “wasn’t a surprise,” according to an organisation tackling child trafficking in Ireland. The Protecting Against Predators study interviewed 21 staff from 14 agencies working with vulnerable children and found that trafficking…
Gretchen Crowe It’s easy for Catholics to take the rosary for granted. We tend to purchase them as souvenirs, or carry them around with us, or even wear them – but we forget the immense power that they have when we actually pray them. And that’s really too bad, because a devotion to the rosary…