Pope’s intention for October: that women have greater leadership roles in the Church

Western People 14.3.2023 Pope Francis at 86 celebrated 10 years as pope last Sunday. Ten years ago, as I watched on television his first appearance as pope on the balcony…

BY KIMBERLEY HEATHERINGTON 12 March 2024 Ireland’s nuns are vanishing.  Once boasting a peak number of 13,400 members — in the 1960s — Irish female religious orders today count fewer…

LEGLESS BUT FLYING: Birgid Skarstein. Has 11 World Championship medals. 7 in Rowing and 4 in Cross country skiing. She is a Paralympic. She is Norwegian. She had an accident…

Brendan Hoban, writing in the Western People, casts an eye over Fernando Meirelle’s film The Two Popes.
Brendan draws one very definite conclusion; having stated that the enjoyment of the film is enhanced by the stunning background of Castel Gandolfo, Rome and the Vatican, Brendan says “It’s easy to see why that artificial world is a dangerous context for impressionable young men who can be easily convinced that Rome represents standards that should be replicated in the wider church and the wider world rather than unambiguously rejected.
Everything about this film suggests that the opposite is the case. The Rome depicted in The Two Popes should be given a wide berth.” 

Chris McDonnell reflects on the Book of the Psalms. “They challenge their readers to face up to their own success and failure in life’s journey and in so doing to come face to face with the mercy and constant forgiveness of the God who made us.”

An edited version of this article by Peter Stanford about the bishops’ meeting in Rome to discuss clerical sexual abuse appeared recently in The Observer.
“It is an appalling moral failure and needs to end now, but that will involve rethinking an entire approach to sexuality in Catholicism that is peculiar, punitive and often plain perverse. The Jesus of the gospels had almost no interest is such matters. Why does the Church leadership? “