This marked a significant departure from the past, where leaders openly identified with Protestantism.

In a poignant moment at Stormont Parliament Building, O'Neill, representing the Irish Catholic community, pledged to serve as a leader for all, extending an olive branch to her unionist counterparts.

"To all of you who are British and unionist, your national identity, your cultures, your traditions are important to me. Let's walk this two-way street together, let's meet one another halfway. I will be doing so with an open hand and also with heart" O'Neill said.

"This is an assembly for all — Catholic, Protestant and dissenter" O'Neill added. "Despite our different outlooks and views on the future constitutional position, the public rightly demands that we cooperate, deliver and work together."

Eamon Martin, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, extended his prayers and blessings to the newly appointed First Minister Michelle O'Neill, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, members of the Northern Ireland Executive, and MLAs.

In his post, Archbishop Martin emphasised the importance of unity and collaboration in addressing the pressing challenges facing families, the impoverished and the vulnerable within society.

Groups threaten stability

O'Neill's road ahead is fraught with challenges, particularly concerning the presence of paramilitary groups and lingering tensions from past conflicts. Despite progress since the Good Friday Agreement, these groups still threaten stability, undermining reconciliation efforts.

Despite Sinn Féin's historical association with Irish Catholics, O'Neill and the party are at odds with Church teaching on several issues. For example, Sinn Féin supported the increase in access to abortion, and the party supports children having access to transgender drugs.

The complex dynamics of Northern Ireland's political landscape, compounded by Brexit-related issues, have hindered the functioning of Stormont.

The collapse of power-sharing arrangements in 2017 and subsequent struggles have highlighted the fragility of the peace process.

The appointment of O'Neill, achieved through painstaking negotiations and agreements, signifies a renewed commitment to governance and stability.

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Catholic News Agency

Politico

CathNews New Zealand

The crowds assembled at Parnell Square at lunchtime, before marching down O'Connell Street and onto Custom House Quay.

The Rally For Life was the first in-person march to be held since 2019 because of Covid restrictions.

Organisers said the chief aim of the rally was to urge the public and the Government to rethink abortion.

A campaign to retain the three-day waiting period before undergoing an abortion was launched at the rally.

Megan Ní Scealláin, a spokesperson for the Life Institute, said: "Voters were guaranteed that women would have a three-day period to reflect between a first abortion appointment and the doctor giving the abortion pill, and it is appalling to see abortion campaigners now push to have that time to think scrapped.

"We know from figures released to Carol Nolan TD that between 800 and 1,000 women did not proceed with an abortion after that initial appointment."

Archbishop Eamon Martin has said campaigners will continue to advocate that "both lives matter".

He said those who support the pro-life movement are constantly "reminding society that every human life is sacred".

Archbishop Martin said the right to personal choice has "been elevated above the fundamental right to life itself" in today's society.

Sources

• RTE News
• The Independent

Martin made the comment after attending Ireland's national pre-synodal assembly this week.

"The question is — what next?

"We are still not entirely certain, but we are open to what the Holy Spirit might be saying and to a quiet and gentle renewal of the faith. We are moving from maintenance to mission.

"In order to make space for something new, we have to accept that there is no point in trying to maintain a particular form of the life of the Church which was for a different time."

The facts are clear. In 2016, people identifying as Catholic in Ireland made up 78.3 percent of the population (approximately 3.7 million people), down from 84.2 percent in the 2011 census. It's predicted the 2022 census will show a further decline.

Ireland also has an ageing clergy and few vocations to the diocesan priesthood or religious life.

Martin noted the past year's synodal conversation with people all over Ireland culminated in the assembly, which was a moment to hear the fruits of that conversation.

"One of the things that is coming across is the (pre-)synodal conversations - an awful lot of people are very passionate about their faith in Jesus Christ ... with the Church. But they want the church to be open to something different," he says.

There are some big barriers to renewal though.

Feedback to the assembly revealed "a despair among a lot of our young people, a lack of hope, and a lack of a sense of purpose" and at the same time "a belief in faith, in hope and in love". This is "what we are trying to rekindle in the life of the Church," Martin says.

His confrere, Archbishop Dermot Farrell, says clerical sexual abuse had irreparably damaged the church's reputation in Ireland. This could spell the end for Catholicism in Ireland if major changes were not implemented within the church, he warned.

He said evidence of Christian belief in Ireland today "has, for all intents and purposes, vanished" and this "underlying crisis of faith was particularly acute among the younger generations". He added, "The current model of the church is unsustainable".

Martin has a more hopeful view.

"We are moving into a new period of evangelisation, recognising that many people - even those who have been baptised in the faith - perhaps don't have a personal relationship with Jesus, don't have a personal sense of God, and indeed maybe don't have a sense of direction in their lives," he says.

"We are trying to find new ways of communicating the joy of the Gospel, which is very much a theme that Pope Francis has been revealing to the Church during his pontificate."

He stresses the importance of reaching out to young people who "are living in a very different space," suggesting the Church play an important pastoral role among an increasingly disaffected youth.

Source

• The Tablet
• Catholic News Service

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh and Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin paid tribute to the generosity of parishioners.

Irish bishops had asked for a special collection in parishes across Ireland in the wake of the Russian invasion.

The collection took place largely over the weekend of March 26-27.

In a joint statement, the archbishops said: "Since the outbreak of this war, over seven million people have been displaced and nearly five million people have been forced to emigrate from Ukraine, becoming international refugees.

"As Christians, our Gospel imperative is to support the victims of this appalling humanitarian crisis, in the words of the Holy Thursday Liturgy, ‘where charity and love are found there is God'.

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"The people of Ireland are well aware that we can never take peace for granted. We must always continue work for peace, to pray for peace and to make sacrifices for peace.

"The scenes from Ukraine in recent days are distressing and frightening. They remind us how fragile peace in the world is. To think that only days ago the people of that country were getting on with their lives, making plans for their families, their businesses, their education - and now suddenly their lives, homes and futures are under threat".

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Now in its eighth year, the unique digital Advent Calendar offers resources for the parish, school and for families which can be accessed behind a virtual door each day during the season of Advent.

The content is aimed at assisting people of all ages to pray and reflect on how best we can keep Christ at the centre of our Christmas preparations during this special liturgical season.

Welcoming this year's Advent Calendar, Archbishop Eamon said: "After another difficult year of living with the Covid-19 pandemic, the season of Advent arrives and offers us a new beginning and a promise of hope for better times."

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The ecumenical service at the Church of Ireland cathedral in Armagh was billed as a neutral "reflection" on the island's division into a British north and independent south a century ago.

The 1921 partition came amid guerrilla warfare in the south and rising sectarian bloodshed in Belfast.

"For the past 100 years, partition has polarized people on this island. It has institutionalized difference, and it remains a symbol of political, cultural and religious division between our communities," said Catholic Archbishop Eamon Martin, whose overwhelmingly Irish nationalist flock seeks an end to partition.

Martin was joined at the ceremony by other Christian leaders, including the heads of the Church of Ireland (Anglican), Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, and the Irish Council of Churches.

The Christian church leaders vowed to face "difficult truth" and work closer together to ensure that the fragile peace process in Northern Ireland leaves a lasting legacy of reconciliation.

The three Protestant leaders, whose churches, like the Catholics, never recognized partition and maintained all-Ireland structures, said they had taken too few risks during three decades of bloodshed over Northern Ireland and the two most recent decades of relative peace.

"I grieve the times when fear has held us back from building relationships," said the Presbyterian moderator, David Bruce.

"I am sorry that as disciples of Jesus Christ we didn't do more to be peacemakers," said Church of Ireland Archbishop John McDowell. He took a sideways jab at current UK efforts to retreat from the Northern Ireland trade protocol and Irish nationalists' desire to overpower British unionist objections to an all-Ireland state.

"We obsessed about some things, especially borders. We are obsessing about them again and being distracted from really thinking about what a good society would look like," McDowell said.

The Irish Methodists' Sierra Leone-born president, Sahr Yambasu, offered the most pointed critique of partition and Britain's imperial past.

Yambasu, who studied in Belfast and settled in the Republic of Ireland in 1995, said he came from a land whose citizens once "were bought and sold and used for profit" by colonial powers that recklessly partitioned Africa.

He said Thursday's ceremony provided "an opportunity to lament, to say sorry, to imagine what could be, and to choose the way forward that can be mutually beneficial."

Among the 300 guests were Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Queen Elizabeth II had been due to participate in the service. However, on the eve of the event, the 95-year-old monarch had reluctantly accepted medical advice to rest rather than travel for the event.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins triggered a diplomatic furore by rejecting his invitation amid claims that it would be partisan and pro-British. That position appeared ill-informed as the sombre ceremony featured expressions of regret over past failures and calls for unity between communities across the island.

Sources

• Politico
• Crux
• Belfast Telegraph

Minister for Housing Darragh O'Brien made the request to the Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin, in a recent letter.

It comes as work continues to finalise the Government's Housing for All plan.

The plan will seek to provide more than 33,000 new homes per year by 2025. It is set to be launched later this week.

Speaking last week, Mr O'Brien said the plan will deliver social housing in Ireland "on a scale never seen before".

He also said the multi-annual housing plan will be fully funded. There would be a "massive emphasis on affordable housing".

The Minister emphasised how identifying land banks and vacant buildings for homes will be a vital part of the Government's future housing plan.

In his letter, the Minister acknowledged the church's independence in managing its property portfolio and how addressing the housing crisis is primarily the State's duty.

A spokesman for Archbishop Martin said he would, on receiving the letter, "consider its content carefully. In consultation with his brother bishops, he will reflect on it during the autumn general meeting of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference in October".

Mr O'Brien highlighted previous remarks by the Most Rev Martin that "radical steps" need to be taken on housing.

O'Brien also pointed to comments by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, about the need for national engagement with "a significant housing crisis".

The archbishop's spokesman said, "The housing and homelessness crisis is a key social justice challenge of this generation".

"Catholic social teaching recognises that housing is a universal human right, with corresponding responsibilities on societies to honour that right," he added.

"Therefore, we must all work towards resolving this crisis in the interest of the common good. In recent years, the faith sector has been particularly vocal in calling for radical action from the State to alleviate the housing and homelessness problem."

Asked if he wanted the State to have first call on land the church has available for sale, O'Brien responded: "I want to have the discussions with them first. In fairness, I have seen that some approved housing bodies have had some good engagement with the churches."

Land and property owned by the Catholic Church in Ireland have previously been valued in the billions. Still, the ownership is not straightforward due to each parish being a separate legal entity in civil and canon law.

In October 2018, after the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland, the Catholic bishops launched A Room at the Inn? This is a pastoral letter on housing and homelessness that called for housing to be recognised "as a human right" and "should be safe, affordable and appropriate".

It said, "provision of housing cannot be left solely to the market". It "should not be treated as any other commodity".

Sources

Irish Times

Irish Times

The government introduced the rule last week in a surprise move.

Archbishop Eamon Martin (pictured) says the penal provisions associated with the new regulation are "provocative" and "draconian".

They also potentially infringed religious freedom and constitutional rights, he says.

"From our initial reading of it, it is clear to us that it is now making it a criminal offence for a priest to say mass with a congregation and it's making it a criminal offence for somebody to go to Mass."

The Irish bishops are seeking legal advice about the new rules. They are also planning to meet with the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly.

Martin says along with other Churches and faith communities in Ireland, the Catholic Church has been cooperating fully with public health messages for over a year.

"It is highly disappointing then, that despite the reassurances of the Taoiseach to Church leaders only two days ago that he understood the importance of faith and worship to the people of Ireland, this statutory instrument was introduced in a clandestine manner and without notice or consultation. We consider this to be a breach of trust," he says.

Donnelly says the new rule dealt with "the position that we have been in for quite some time".

His response to the bishops' concerns that the new rule targets religious worship, Donnelly says: "The measure isn't focused specifically at religious communities or any other communities; the measure is focused explicitly at indoor gatherings."

However, Martin says church services "are indeed singled out in this statutory instrument for particular attention.

"Statutory instruments are only published when there is something new to say, they don't come out just to say what we already know. If it's not doing anything new, then why have it?"

He is also concerned that the new rule is unclear and could cause confusion.

"A priest would be forgiven for wondering after this statutory instrument, if he is breaking the law by going over to his church to say mass if he hasn't got a webcam."

Another concern is the lack of clarity over weddings.

"For some reason, this statutory instrument does not specify that it's okay to do a wedding Mass. It does say you can go to a wedding reception."

Martin says in contrast to the dialogue that has taken place between church and state in Northern Ireland over public worship, "South of the border, it appears that everything has to be through statutory instrument, through regulation… and I wonder about the maturity of that relationship."

Source

• The Tablet
• Image: Eamon Mallie

Viganò achieved this by releasing an 11-page letter accusing Pope Francis of mishandling sexual abuse claims on the final day of his visit to Ireland.

In the letter, Viganò claims Francis was aware of sexual misconduct concerns about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and did not act on the information.

"It was on the last day of the event and we were actually flying out to Knock, the national Marian Shrine of Ireland, and we became aware of the fact that overnight in the States this news had broken.

"I have to say, personally, I was very saddened. I was saddened that this was overshadowing what was otherwise a really important celebration of family and the importance of families in the new evangelisation of the faith.

"In some ways, I felt our World Meeting of Families had been hijacked in a way by this particular letter."

Martin says he thinks Francis dealt with the matter "very quietly and with great serenity."

"You may remember that it was that morning when he arrived at the shrine in Knock, the first thing he did was he went into the shrine chapel and we had a full five minutes of silence where he was clearly, I imagine, placing this very grave situation at the feet of Our Lady and asking for her intercession and her guidance.

"There was an amazing feeling in Knock, I was there myself, to have tens of thousands of people go silent.

"What was very beautiful about that for me was the fact that the apparition of Our Lady at Knock is quite unique - when she appeared at Knock she said nothing, she was silent before the lamb, before the altar, with the presence of St Joseph and St John.

"I felt Pope Francis was entering into that silent space of contemplation. No doubt within his mind was all of this stuff swirling around about the Viganò letter, but perhaps he was placing it all at the feet of Our Lady, the Queen of Ireland and asking for her protection and her intercession."

Source

• The Tablet
• Crux Now
• Image: Vatican News

Writing on his blog after the synod on the family in Rome, Fr Flannery noted that Pope Francis sees the synodal process as the pattern for the whole church.

Fr Flannery quipped that this is another example of Francis "stealing the [Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland's] best ideas.

"We [the ACP] have been calling for a synod of the Irish Church for the past five years," Fr Flannery said.

"And I find it ironic that the two Bishops Martin, who are now so enthusiastic about the process they have been through in Rome, showed no interest whatever in our proposal, and wouldn't even meet and talk to us about it."

Fr Flannery was referring to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin and Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, who both went to the synod in Rome.

Fr Flannery said he was pleased at the synod's final document, even though it didn't contain everything he had hoped for.

"It left issues sufficiently alive for Francis to say further on them when he produces a document.

"And judging by his final statement to the synod on Saturday evening, which I loved, his document could be really interesting, maybe even on the same scale as Evangelii Gaudium."

In 2012, Fr Flannery was suspended from public ministry by the Congregation of the Faith (CDF) for his views on women priests, homosexuality and contraception.

Fr Flannery said the big problem with the synod on the family was the absence of women as voters.

He said voting was clearly not restricted to the ordained as one religious brother who isn't a priest was a voting member at the synod.

This was another example of the Church keeping "women in their place", "subservient with no input into decision-making", he said.

"Unfortunately, this is the one area in which Francis is particularly weak, and I have no doubt that the unequal position of women in the Church is going to be the big stumbling block for the foreseeable future."

Sources

• Fr Tony Flannery blog
• Irish Times
• Image: Catholic Ireland

Archbishop Eamon Martin became Archbishop of Armagh and Ireland's primate following Pope Francis's acceptance of the resignation of Cardinal Sean Brady, who had turned 75.

According to The Tablet, during an address at St Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh on September 8, Archbishop Martin pledged to be a "servant leader" and cautioned against expectations of top-down leadership.

He called on the laity to take ownership of their vocation and mission to hand on the faith.

Outlining his vision for the future of the Church, the archbishop said it would not be about "building up some big edifice or some triumphalist Church or trying to make sure that it dominates politics and the state".

Archbishop Martin, 52, said he wanted "a Church that is humble . . . a Church on our knees, hopefully in prayer, recognising the terrible things that have happened in the past and the need to ask God's mercy and to ask forgiveness of people".

But he warned that he is only one person and cannot work miracles for the Church in Ireland.

He said the Irish Church found itself in a new context and must find ways of bringing the Gospel to the people.

Ireland was now a country of different Christian traditions and faiths, and quite a number of people who do not identify themselves with any faith, he said.

Even though people are living in a very fast world with many commitments, he believed "people still need God in their lives and they need their Church".

"There is still a lot of hope in people that they would like a renewal of their Church".

Referring to his episcopal motto, "Sing a New Song to the Lord", he indicated that the renewal he had in mind would not be revolutionary.

"I am not actually talking about writing new words but maybe a new way of singing the song of God in people's lives," he said, adding that he was inspired by Pope Francis's ideas about "pastoral ministry in a missionary key".

The archbishop said his priorities would be "to get to know my people and to facilitate a movement that will allow people to be confident in their faith without being polemical and condemnatory".

Sources

• The Tablet
• Belfast Telegraph
• Image: Scottish Catholic Observer

Archbishop-elect Martin has been appointed coadjutor archbishop of Armagh, making him the designated successor to Cardinal Sean Brady, who has been under pressure to resign.

Cardinal Brady will turn 75, the age at which he must submit his resignation to the Pope, in August 2014 but commentators are predicting that Archbishop-elect Martin will replace him before then.

The editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper, Michael Kelly, described the appointment as an "exit strategy" for Cardinal Brady.

The new coadjutor, currently adminstrator of Derry diocese, told the media there is "need for renewal in the Church, so that the message of Christ, in all its richness, is presented in ways which engage a new generation".

"There is a need for a mature relationship between Church and society, in both parts of this island, and people of faith have a vital role to play," he said.

"It would hugely impoverish our faith if we were expected to 'leave it at home' or 'keep it for Sundays', excluding it from our conversations and actions in daily life."

Cardinal Brady's tenure as primate of all Ireland and president of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference since 1996, has been marked by controversy over clerical sex abuse.

Advocates for abuse victims have called for his resignation since 2010, when it emerged that he had failed to inform civil authorities about an abusive priest who went on to molest children in several countries.

The former Bishop of Derry, Bishop Edward Daly, said Archbishop-elect Martin was seen as "a clean pair of hands" after the Church's abuse scandals.

"He does not carry any baggage from the past with him," Bishop Daly said.

The archbishop-elect is a former executive secretary of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference.

Sources:

BBC

Irish Times

Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference

Image: Business Post