Dear Editor, Fr Rolheiser wrote (The Irish Catholic 20/6/2024): “How we die leaves behind a legacy, a particular spirit, which either nurtures or haunts those left behind”. Reading that I thought of Charlie Bird and Rob Burrow. They suffered and died from Motor Neuron Disease which is a debilitating condition that is very demeaning, horrifying…
The international organisation We Are Church (WAC) released an open letter to Pope Francis, requesting full equality of women, including ordination, to be included in the October 2024 Synod. “You have rightly called the Church to walk together in communion, participation and mission”, the letter reads. WAC also said that women are being kept in…
In the midst of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza, the patriarchs and leaders of ancient Christian churches in Jerusalem have signed a joint document in which they denounce that four Israeli municipalities have sought to levy municipal taxes on church properties in violation of “centuries” of historical agreements. The Church leaders, including Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa,…
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…
Spain’s Catholic Church has excommunicated a group of 10 nuns after they refused to renounce their allegiance to a rebel former priest. The sisters, who live in a 15th-century convent in Belorado on the St James Way pilgrimage route near Burgos, said last month they no longer recognised rule by the Vatican and claimed they…
Acclaimed Gaelic games commentator Michéal Ó Muircheartaigh, who amassed over 60 years of broadcasting before his retirement in 2010, died on Tuesday at the age of 93. Throughout his celebrated career, which was mostly associated with radio coverage of games, he made reference to his Faith and proudly spoke of how he had been a…
Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that about 9,000 Christian families have returned to their homes on the Nineveh Plains after fleeing a decade ago, when ISIS took the region. In June of 2014, the Islamist extremist group captured Mosul and the villages to the north and…
A surge in kidnappings has hit Nigeria’s Catholic clergy, with two more priests abducted within the past two weeks. Fr Christian Ike – the parish priest of St Matthew’s Church in Ajalli, Anambra State, was taken on June 16 alongside Fr Ogbonnia Aneke after a church service. The kidnapping was confirmed by the Chancellor of…
Women could be named Ministers Dear Editor, Dr Cerrato tells us women may not be ordained deacon for “fundamentally theological” reasons [The Irish Catholic – June 6, 2024]. Also, while there were “Deaconesses” in the past, he points out they were not “equivalent” to male deacons. He may well be right, but that need not…