Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz Braña has been named as the new prelate of Opus Dei. The body’s former Auxiliary Vicar thus becomes the third successor to Saint Josemaria, and replaces Msgr Javier Echevarría, who died on December 12. Msgr Braña was born in Paris in 1944 to a Spanish family in exile. He graduated from the…
Courtney McGrail
US abortion rates at 40-year low
Abortions in the United States have fallen to their lowest number since legalisation with the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organisation committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, 926,200 terminations were recorded in 2014, a decline of 32,500 over the previous year and the…
Time to love them both
Members of the Pro Life Campaign pictured during a demonstration with the group’s latest banner campaign to save the Eighth Amendment protection for the unborn, taking place during the gathering of the Citizens’ Assembly on abortion. Photo courtesy of the Pro Life Campaign.
Bearing gifts we traverse afar…
Three Wise Men from the Scoil ĺosa primary school Christmas pageant in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo. Photo: Stephen Farragher.
Portrait of the Blessed
Bishop Fintan Monahan of Killaloe with Navan-based artist Agnieszka Ryan and her portrait of Blessed John Henry Newman, which Tuam Council of Priests had commissioned as a gift for the bishop, a former priest of the Archdiocese of Tuam. Bishop Monahan has long been an admirer of the 19th-Century cardinal, about whom his licentiate thesis…
News in Brief
Bishop William Crean address Bishop William Crean will address the annual Diocese of Kerry Clergy Assembly on January 10. The title of his talk is ‘From what wells do we drink now? – Reflections on the changing patterns of faith and practice in Ireland today’. The venue is the Gleneagle Hotel, Muckross Road, Killarney, beginning…
An Arab Islamic Institute for Dublin?
Secret of the powers that be Over the last 30 years the Islamic presence in Dublin has grown. I wrote about this then about in my book Dublin Churches, for the only mosque on the North Circular Road was making use of a former Presbyterian church. The first Muslim presence was due to Malayan medical…
Bumper receipts for charity fast before the feast
Wexford’s annual St Iberius Four Day fast has raised over €46,000 for charity, local priest Fr Aodhán Marken has said. The fast, which since the late 1990s has been an ecumenical event held outside St Iberius’ Church, saw Fr Marken joining Church of Ireland Rev. Arthur Minion for four days during which the two clerics…
Pro Cathedral launches annual unwanted gifts collection drive
Staff Reporter The annual collection of unwanted gifts at Dublin’s St Mary’s Pro Cathedral got underway on St Stephen’s Day and runs until January 6. An initiative of Crosscare, the archdiocese’s social care agency, the collection invites anyone who is willing to ‘re-gift’ a Christmas present to drop parcels at St Mary’s crib. The gifts…
News in Brief
Msgr Colm McCaughan RIP The death has taken place of Msgr Colm McCaughan, former Chancellor of the Diocese of Down & Connor. He was 89. Born in 1927 in Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, Colm began his studies for the priesthood in 1946 and was ordained in 1954. He assumed his first appointment as curate in Bangor.…