23rd April 2017 Holy See
How did St George become the Patron Saint of England? He never visited the country, and his most famous exploit is a myth. Yet, despite that St George has become of the more popular saints, and is patron of Portugal, Malta and Georgia as well as England. Not much definite is known about St George. […]
6th March 2017 Holy See
We usually think of the Catholic Church as a male-dominated organisation because priests staff the hierarchy. But, as I have been discovering in my first six months in Rome, women play an important role in the Church. Indeed there are nearly twice as many religious sisters (800,000) as there are Catholic priests (around 400,000) – […]
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22nd December 2016 Holy See
Pope Francis turned 80 on 17 December. Messages poured in from around the world (70,000 emails) and the Pope celebrated with 8 homeless people. Much has been written about the Pope’s achievements. He is on a mission to change the Church, making it more global, ecumenical, open to dialogue with other faiths, focussed on the […]
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15th March 2016
On 14-16 March we are celebrating Northern Ireland. One of Northern Ireland’s best-known, and best-loved writers is Clive Staples Lewis, who was born in Belfast in 1898. His most famous works are the Narnia series, following the adventures of the Pevensie children (based on a group of children who were evacuated to stay with him […]
10th February 2016
Pope Francis is on record as calling modern slavery “a crime against humanity”. Over 200 years since the British Parliament abolished the transatlantic slave trade and began an international campaign, led by the Royal Navy, to eradicate it, the Home Office estimates that there are around 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK […]
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28th January 2016
There has been war in Syria throughout Pope Francis’s pontificate. It has been the principal foreign policy concern of the Holy See since his election, and continues to be so. His Holiness has spoken out many times about the need for action to stop the war in Syria, and it is reasonable to suppose that […]
21st April 2015
The Holy See’s decision to take part in the Venice Biennale, after its inaugural participation in 2013, reminds us of the extraordinary role played by the Popes in the history and production of art. For much of its history, the Holy See was an undoubted centre of connoisseurship, patronage and artistic endeavour. It is impossible […]
11th February 2015
The issue of sex abuse of children by priests has accompanied me throughout my mission here since I arrived in Rome in August 2011. As I was preparing to take up the role, it was clear to me that nothing had done more in recent years to damage the credibility of the Holy See, and […]
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3rd February 2015
The new Holy See Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, is well-named. When earlier this week Msgr. Gallagher met the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, the Deputy Secretary, the Maltese Msgr. Antoine Camilleri, reminded us that the name Gallagher is the anglicisation of the Irish surname Ó Gallchobhair, meaning “foreign help” or […]
27th January 2015
In November 2005, the United Nations General Assembly declared 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date recognises the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau slave labour and extermination camps in 1945. As well as being an occasion to remember the millions who suffered and died under Nazi policies, Holocaust Memorial Day gives us a chance […]