The Catholic priest ministering to the bereaved of the Union Hall tragedy in Cork has spoken of the overwhelming ”spirit of unity” that has marked the community’s response to the loss of the trawler Tit Bonhomme with five lives. Speaking to The Irish Catholic from the quayside as the search for the last two…
Justice Minister Alan Shatter has warned that the world must never be allowed to forget the horror of the Nazi Holocaust. Launching a new exhibition in Dublin on the systematic extermination of an estimated six million European Jews this week, Mr Shatter said: ‘As the years pass by and the remaining survivors of the…
Proposed legislation before the Oireachtas would seriously undermine the right of faith schools to protect their ethos if it passes without amendment. The Education (Amendment) Bill 2012, which was introduced in the Seanad in early January, removes the right for school patrons to agree before a teacher is redeployed from another school. In effect,…
Religion and culture must be in respectful dialogue so both may inform each other, the head of the Catholic Schools Partnership has said. Fr Michael Drumm was speaking this week at the annual Greenhills Ecumenical Conference. ‘There will always be a certain tension between religious faith and culture,’ he said, noting that ‘some people…
The funeral has taken place of Very Rev. Frank Bergin, a priest of the Diocese of Killaloe for the past 64 years. Born in Kinnitty, Co. Offaly in 1922, Frank Bergin was ordained in 1948 before travelling to the Diocese of Nottingham in England. Returning to Killaoe in 1950, he served variously in Cloughjordan,…
Members of the Neocatechumenal Way in Ireland are celebrating the endorsement of their apostolic outreach by Pope Benedict XVI. At a January 20 meeting with the Way in Rome, Pope Benedict approved the special celebrations that the Neocatechumenate organises for its small communities and praised the lay movement’s ”firm commitment to proclaim the Gospel…
A euthanasia group was behind Britain’s commission on assisted suicide, writes Greg Daly A.S. Byatt caused a stir some years back when she publicly disparaged the phenomenal success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, describing them as little more than a comfortable patchwork of clichés, unworthy of comparison with the writings of such fantasists…
The Relics of the Cross, stolen from Holy Cross Abbey in Co. Tipperary last October, were this week returned to the abbey undamaged following a successful Garda recovery operation. Holy Cross PP Fr Tom Breen said that parishioners and pilgrims are ‘overjoyed’ by the news. ‘It is wonderful that the relics have been recovered…
An Irish nun has been named as one of the top ten people of the year by Inside the Vatican, a monthly Catholic news magazine. Sr Patricia Murray IBVM was honoured for her work through the Solidarity With South Sudan (SSS) project. Established by religious from 170 Catholic congregations and led by Sr Murray,…
Pro-life campaigners are putting pressure on Fine Gael to keep the party’s pre-election promise not to introduce abortion legislation. The Minister for Health James Reilly announced at the weekend the members of the 14-member ‘expert group’ from the medical, legal and nursing profession which will report to the Government on the issue within six…
Paul Keenan
Michael Kelly
Mags Gargan