Pain and loss allow us to connect with others who are suffering and to love more deeply, a well-known US comedian and chat show host has said. Interviewed on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°, Stephen Colbert, the Catholic host of The Late Show talked about the deaths of his father and brothers Peter and Paul in…
Among the pilgrims on Croagh Patrick last month was a Belgian who’d walked three months to get there, writes Greg Daly Santiago de Compostela is a fashionable destination for Irish pilgrims year-in-year-out nowadays, with a record 7,548 Irish pilgrims collecting their ‘Compostela’ from the cathedral offices last year. In the Camino’s medieval heyday, however,…
A lie can be halfway around the world, as the adage so often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain has it, before the truth has got its boots on. The internet has managed to make this depressing reality all the worse, and just as paper doesn’t refuse ink, so one thing screens cannot do is screen out…
Elphin’s Bishop Kevin Doran has called on Sinn Féin to clarify its position on attempts in the British parliament to impose abortion law in the North, something the party has previously opposed as an exercise of British authority in the region. Bishop Doran’s comments came after senior figures in Sinn Féin welcomed the proposed liberalisation…
Irelands early saints are an inextricable part of our national identity, Greg Daly is told Something said briefly, as Nietzsche once pointed out, can be the fruit of much long thought, and Fr John J. Ó Ríordáin’s Early Irish Saints is eloquent testimony to this. A slim book, drawing together 15 pen pictures of…
Public concern about housing and homelessness is set to be a defining issue in the next general election, Focus Ireland has said. Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Mike Allen of Focus said widespread concern on doorsteps about the housing crisis has not yet manifested in the ballot box. “I think some of the political strategists…
Francis and Benedict’s papacies are profoundly interwoven, writes Greg Daly Claims this week that Pope Benedict had in 2005 wanted the then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to serve as his Secretary of State and help clean up the Roman Curia may be surprising, especially to those who clutter and poison Catholic media with tales of…
A poll of visitors at the National Ploughing Championship to find their traditional prayer is intended to boost an awareness of faith and the importance of prayer, Bishop Denis Nulty has said. The Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, in whose diocese this year’s ploughing championships will take place in September, said that with over 85%…
“I do not understand people who struggle to understand this Pope,” begins Mark Shea over at patheos.com/blogs/markshea. “I don’t really believe they find him ‘confusing’. I think they just don’t want to listen to him.” Perhaps Mark overreaches in saying that everything people need to know about Francis is summed up in the words “he has…
Extensive experience should give Ireland’s Capuchins grounds for ongoing hope, the new provincial of the Irish friars has said. Speaking in his closing address to the Irish Capuchins’ provincial chapter, Leitrim’s Fr Seán Kelly said while all those gathered at the Emmaus retreat centre in Swords, Co. Dublin, were fully aware of the order’s lack…