The repeal of the eighth amendment in 2018 was, to many of us, a source of deep grief. The margin of defeat, however, was no less than shocking. Talking to pro-life activists across the country, I know that many woke on the Sunday after the referendum in what seemed to them to be a different

The Encyclical Laudato Si’, published in 2015, and Querida Amazonia, the Post-Synodal Exhortation published in February of this year, tap readily into the increasing awareness that young people have of the enormity of the ecological crisis that we now face. Querida Amazonia (‘Dear Amazon’), following the 2019 Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for

An American organisation, Compassion and Choice, formerly the Hemlock Society, has adopted an appealing and catchy slogan to promote their campaign for assisted suicide. The words ‘compassion’ and ‘choice’ resonate with modern society since their antonyms are cruelty and coercion. There is a danger that this language may help shut down the debate and generate

‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?’ Saint Paul’s no-nonsense rhetorical question to the Christians of Rome is crying out for the obvious answer: ‘Of course we do!’ Yet the very fact that Paul needs to pose such a question hints that

When I started secondary school, if you didn’t have Facebook, you may as well not have existed. If you didn’t have Facebook, nobody could tag you in anything, no one could like your posts or, perhaps most importantly, your profile pictures. The number of likes you could rack up on a picture of yourself was

FR CHRIS HAYDEN: Fr David Murphy, we’re sitting here in the chaplain’s house in Liam Mellows Barracks, Renmore, Galway, where you’re stationed at present.1 What’s your role here? FR DAVID MURPHY: I’m here as a locum chaplain for the Defence Forces. I cover for chaplains who are stationed overseas, until their return. At the moment,

Pope Pius X1 declared St Thérèse the Universal Patroness of the Missions in 1927, ‘equal to St Francis Xavier, with all the rights and privileges that went with this title.’ How was this humble Carmelite, who died at twenty-four and who never left the enclosure of her Carmel, put on a par with Francis Xavier,

I was only ten years of age when Martin Luther King delivered the famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial, in which he said: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content

"I don’t expect people to pray in front of an image if I haven’t prayed in front of it." - Dony MacManus

FR CHRIS HAYDEN Can you tell us something about the striking building which became Kylemore Abbey? SR MÁIRE HICKEY The Abbey building was constructed between 1867 and 1872, by Mitchell Henry, a wealthy Englishman of Northern Irish descent. The surroundings are spectacular, and the house itself is an extraordinary feat, because he had to dig