Two of Dorothy Day’s granddaughters, Martha and Kate Hennessy, shared Day’s message of Gospel nonviolence with students and staff from the University of Glasgow, Catholic and Episcopal parishes in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and members of the Scottish Parliament. They had a private meeting with Archbishop William Nolan of Glasgow during a visit to Scotland, hosted by the Glasgow Catholic Worker. They held a prayerful act of witness at Faslane naval base, the home of Britain’s nuclear weapons system. This included prayers for peace in the Middle East, all victims of war, the end of nuclear defence, and for the strength to be peacemakers. Dorothy Day was a lifelong nonviolent social activist and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in the U.S.
Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross (1951) is expected to be loaned by the city of Glasgow to the Vatican. The Dicastery for Evangelisation plans to display the painting alongside the original drawing by St John of the Cross and Dali’s Assumpta Corpuscolaria Lapislazulina (1952). Housed in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Dali’s painting was bought for £8,200 by the city of Glasgow in 1952. Now worth an estimated £60 million, it is set to be displayed in San Marcello al Corso church, Rome from 13 May – 23 June, as part of a series of art events prior to the 2025 Jubilee.
Nigel Parker, who has stepped down as director of the Catholic Union, has been replaced as interim director by Tristan Feunteun who started on Monday. Feunteun was a partner in a City law firm and also has experience of public affairs and the voluntary sector. He lives in London and is married with a young family. The Catholic Union’s next pub talk will take place on 30 April with Bafta nominated actor and writer Alex Macqueen. He will talk about being a Catholic in the acting world. It will take place in the upstairs room of the Windsor Castle pub behind Westminster Cathedral.
Christian Climate Action has organised vigils and other events throughout April in Brighton, Kent, Liverpool and London. In Brighton a vigil is planned for19 April where silent prayer for the planet will take place. There will be a climate vigil the following day atCanterbury cathedral.
The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has launched a new e-lobby tool on its website to help people contact their MPs about proposed changes to abortion law as part of the Criminal Justice Bill, due to have its report stage in the House of Commons shortly. The bishops oppose an amendment to the Bill which would remove offences that make it illegal for a woman to perform her own abortion at any point right through to birth. The bishops do support another amendment that would lower the abortion limit to 22 weeks.
Booking is open for hearing Fr Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza, due to speak in Glasgow on 26 April. He will later celebrate Mass in St Andrew’s Cathedral alongside Archbishop William Nolan of Glasgow. The talk on the theme, “Hope for Peace in Gaza”, has been organised by Sciaf, Justice and Peace Scotland and the Archdiocese of Glasgow. Fr Romanelli was in Bethlehem when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. Since then, he has been unable to return to Gaza but is in regular communication with his parish, which is sheltering around 700 displaced people.
The Movement for Married Clergy has decided to cease functioning as an independent organisation and says that it has found a “new home to reinvigorate our goal” in a grassroots community called Root and Branch which calls for reform and inclusion in the Catholic Church. Founded in the 1970s, the Movement for Married Clergy has questioned the subject of a compulsorily celibate clergy and the separation of the vocation of celibacy from the priesthood in light of the declining number of priests serving in parishes.
Pax Christi England and Wales promoted a new “Teach Peace” resource for secondary schools this week at the conference of the National Education Union, which represents teachers and education professionals, and where Pax Christi education and youth Worker Aisling Griffin ran a stall alongside the Peace Pledge Union. Produced by the Peace Education Network, the resource offers cross-curricular lessons on topics including, challenging antisemitism and Islamophobia, tackling militarism in schools, conflict transformation, religion and peace, and the human rights effects of the arms trade.
St Vincent de Paul Society of England and Wales has marked the “unhappy birthday” that was the seventh anniversary on 6 April of the government’s two-child limit to benefit payments. The society supports the End Child Poverty Coalition which is calling for the Department of Work and Pensions “to scrap the unfair sibling tax”. Other groups calling for an end to the “sibling penalty” include the Joint Public Issues Team of the Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches, and Barnardo’s.
Dublin Airport Authority has said it is trying to find a “new approach” to facilitate the blessing of its planes following criticism by secular campaigners. According to Gript media, the tradition, which takes place annually on Christmas day when no planes take off or land at the airport, did not take place this year. The authority said the decision was due to a change in security regulations. However humanist Dara Hogan said the decision followed a request for a non-religious blessing to be held at the airport. “We must do more to separate church from state,” Dara Hogan said in a post on X.
The Pro Life Campaign has described the case of a woman who almost died from an ectopic pregnancy three days after having a medical abortion in Limerick as “shocking”. The circumstances were revealed by the Irish Medical Journal. It is understood that the 24-year-old woman had a medical termination though she was in fact experiencing an undetected ectopic pregnancy. Pro Life Campaign spokesperson Eilís Mulroy said it showed the disastrous impact of the decision by the Government in 2018, to “reject out of hand an amendment which would have mandated an ultrasound before an abortion could be carried out”.
Police Scotland are investigating a number of hate-crime incidents alleged to have taken place during Sunday’s Old Firm football match between Rangers and Celtic at Ibrox stadium. No arrests were made at the Rangers ground, despite an incident when a man was struck by a missile, but a number of offences were reported and will be handled under the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which finally became law on April 1. The Act criminalises any threatening or abusive behaviour likely to stir up hatred on grounds of religion, age, disability or sexual characteristics and orientation. Highly controversial, the Act replaces the repealed Offensive Behaviour At Football (Scotland) Act, which was criticised by law experts and others for encouraging vexatious and trivial complaint. Rangers and Celtic drew Sunday’s match 3 – 3. BM
On April 3, Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB concelebrated the funeral of Canon Roddy Johnston in St Columba’s Cathedral, Oban. The first diocesan priest to serve the Isle of Lewis since the Reformation, from 2016 to 2024, Johnston was Vicar General of the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles. Born in Sheffield in 1954, Johnston worked as a forester before converting to Catholicism and training for the priesthood at the Beda College, Rome. Ordained in 1997, from 2011 to 2019 he was parish priest to Our Holy Redeemer, Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis. Johnston contributed to Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Scotland and died on March 16.
Tributes have been paid to Irish missionary Sr Enda Ryan who died in Malaysia aged 96. A member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, she was born in Galbally, Co Limerick in 1928. After her arrival in Malaysia in 1954, she championed women’s education. She founded the Assunta School Datin Paduka for girls whose education had been interrupted during the Communist uprising. She assisted the FMM Sisters in establishing the Ave Maria Clinic which is now the Assunta Hospital. Sr Enda received numerous awards including the Excellent Service Award from the Ministry of Education in 1985 and the Anugerah Tokoh Guru Selangor in 1990.
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