Fr Damian Howard, the departing provincial of the Jesuits in Britain, will be the next senior Catholic chaplain to Oxford University.
Fr Peter Gallagher, who takes up the post of provincial on 1 September, commissioned Fr Howard to take up the role from the start of the new term in October. Bishop Nicholas Hudson made the appointment as chair of the Oxford and Cambridge Education Board.
Fr Howard takes the place of Fr Matthew Power SJ, whose six-year tenure was praised by current and former members of the chaplaincy after he announced his departure last week.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Great Britain will adopt the Gregorian calendar from 1 September, following the decision of the Church in Ukraine in February to reform its calendar from the same date.
In a decree issued on 9 June, Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski of the Eparchy of the Holy Family in London said that “after listening to the opinion of clergy and laity” he would move the eparchy from the Julian calendar to the “new style” liturgical year, meaning that its major feasts will now correspond to those in the Latin Church.
The future of Scotland’s only Catholic boarding school, Kilgraston in Bridge of Earn, Perthshire, has been secured after an emergency fundraiser by parents and supporters plugged a £2 million gap in the school’s finances.
The school, currently a project of the Society of the Sacred Heart, will now be managed long-term by a private education company, Achieve Education, according to an announcement by the board last week. The news follows the 1 June statement by the school that it would this month that the school was to close at the end of the current term.
Kilgraston, owned by the Society of the Sacred Heart, an association of female religious, was founded in 1930 and has 217 pupils and 116 staff. Due to declining rolls and a drop in income after pandemic-related lockdowns, the school informed parents it would close at the end of the current school term on 2 June.
After the announcement, an emergency fundraising campaign raised £1.2 million of the estimated £2 million necessary to avoid insolvency in just 48 hours.
The number of abortions in Scotland rose to the highest figure ever last year, according to new figures released by the national public health body.
Public Health Scotland recorded 16,596 abortions in Scotland in 2022 – 2,659 more than the 13,937 in 2021 and the highest figure on record.
The rate of abortions per thousand women aged 15-44 increased from 13.4 per thousand to 16.1 per thousand over the same period, an increase of 19.24 per cent. The number of abortions in cases where the unborn baby was thought to have Down’s syndrome nearly doubled from 32 to 59 in the same period.
The pro-life campaign group Right to Life called the news “a great tragedy” and an indictment of society’s failure both to “protect the lives of babies in the womb” and “to offer full support to women with unplanned pregnancies”.
The pastoral and ecclesial landscape in Dublin and across the island of Ireland is being transformed, Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell has said, and the recent census findings reflected this.
Speaking at the liturgical reception at St Mary's Pro Cathedral, Dublin for the new papal nuncio, Archbishop Luis Mariano Montemayor, Archbishop Farrell said Ireland was becoming more diverse, and parts of the island have, for the first time in their history, a distinctly multi-cultural feel.
He paid tribute to the faith of new communities which bring “much life” and said he had been “moved and heartened” by the celebration of the living faith of the Filipino, Polish, Latin American communities and those of the Orthodox Churches.
Censured Irish priest Fr Tony Flannery has said all forms of ministry in the Church need to be opened up to all the baptised in light of the recent Irish census findings which show a significant drop in the number identifying as Catholic.
Writing in the Irish Examiner, the Redemptorist said opening up all ministry to the baptised raises the “very thorny and difficult question of the Catholic Church’s attitude to women”.
He warned that the Church “cannot continue to exclude women from ministry and decision-making if it wants to have any chance to attract young women into the Church. This won’t be easy, and has the potential to cause serious divisions in the Church.”
Practical responses to welcoming refugees into local communities was one of the topics discussed at a seminar in Maynooth last week titled, “Journeying together with immigrants”.
The seminar was addressed by Bishop Michael Duignan, chair of the Council for Immigrants of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and by Eugene Quinn and David Moriarty of the Jesuit Refugee Service. They spoke about the challenges of offering hospitality and solidarity in the midst of Ireland’s accommodation crisis.
Albina Polyshchuk from Ukraine, who is now living Loughrea, Co Galway, spoke about the experience of living in an Irish community, while Fr Willie Purcell of Ossory Diocese spoke about offering pastoral care to migrant communities at parish level.
The leader of the Irish Church, Archbishop Eamon Martin, led a pilgrimage to Tyburn in London in honour of St Oliver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh who was martyred in 1681.
Archbishop Martin described the placing of a relic of his “saintly predecessor” on the very spot in London where he was martyred as a “moving” experience. He prayed for a renewed commitment to peace and reconciliation which he said was still much needed in St Oliver’s “beloved island of Ireland”.
The pilgrimage to Tyburn included a symposium at London Oratory on St Oliver’s ministry in the oppressed dioceses he served, titled “Bringing Peace and Banishing Bitterness”.
The Chairman of Atheist Ireland has said the state should not be promoting religion or atheism within a hospital setting. Michael Nugent was speaking to Newstalk Radio about the removal of religious images and artefacts from St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin following its transfer of ownership from the Religious Sisters of Charity to a charitable trust.
Reports, according to Newstalk, suggested that some patients and staff were upset by the development. Supporting calls for the hospital to be renamed, Mr Nugent said, “We shouldn’t be calling it St Vincent’s,” adding, “The same for all the state-funded primary schools in the country that have names of saints in front of them.”
The Diocese of Elphin’s newest priest is a once-eminent oncologist who worked in some of the top hospitals in the United States. Fr Chris Garrett, aged 59, was ordained to the priesthood at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Sligo last weekend. He is a nephew of the late Bishop Christy Jones of Elphin.
Fr Garrett is one of four priests being ordained in Ireland this year, down from eight priests last year. In his homily, Bishop Kevin Doran said it is unlikely he will ordain another priest for Elphin before his retirement in five years’ time.
The Bishop of Killaloe, Fintan Monahan, has expressed concern over the sharp increase in road deaths and he appealed to road users, especially young people, to take extra care to protect lives. Ahead of a “blessing of the roads” ceremony at the cathedral in Ennis, he said, “Everyone shares a responsibility to protect human life.”
There have been 77 road fatalities in the Republic so far this year, an increase of 13 over 2022. Over the same period there were 31 road fatalities in Northern Ireland. Bishop Monahan invited parishes to pray for those who have lost their lives and for the safety of road users.
Aylesford Priory in Kent will host a day of celebration of Edith Stein on 2 July followed by a conference on her thought.
Organised by the Kairos Forum, a disabilities advisory service, the day of celebration will tell the story of Stein – known to the Church as St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross – while the conference on 4-6 July will gather scholars of her writing under the title “Dignitas Personae et Amor Dei: The Value of the Human Person and Divine Love; Meeting Edith Stein”.
For additional information contact cgangemi.kairos@gmai.com.
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