Bishop supports bomb families

Bishop supports bomb families

The Bishop of Argyll and the Isles travelled to the island of Barra last week to support the families of two girls caught up in the Manchester bomb attack. Eilidh MacLeod (above), 14, died, while her friend, Laura MacIntyre, 15, is still seriously ill in a Manchester hospital. Bishop Brian McGee said: “This is a time of terrible anguish. Spending time with the relatives of both girls was a reminder of the human costs of acts of terror. Such acts leave families broken, lives scarred and innocence destroyed.” Describing Barra as an “island of close bonds and deep faith”, parish priest Fr John Paul MacKinnon urged islanders to come together and pray. He said: “God has a special place for our dear beautiful Eilidh. She will be united forever with God’s Holy Angels.” Twenty-two people, including seven children, died when Salman Abedi detonated a bomb in a suicide attack at the end of a concert by the US singer Ariana Grande at the Manchester Arena on 22 May. In a joint interview filmed in Manchester Cathedral for the BBC’s Songs of Praise programme last weekend, the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, and Imam Irfan Chishti, from the Rochdale Council of Mosques, spoke of how Christians and Muslims would work together to find a way forward after the attack.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has this year joined the global prayer initiative Thy Kingdom Come, which invites Christians around the world to pray between Ascension and Pentecost for more people to come to know Jesus Christ. Started last year as an invitation from the archbishops of Canterbury and York to the Church of England, Thy Kingdom Come has grown into an international ecumenical initiative. “It’s not a Church of England thing, it’s not an Anglican thing, it’s a Christian thing,” the Archbishop of Canterbury says in a video clip introducing the initiative,

Cardinal George Pell is to ordain 10 men as Deacons for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham later this month. Eight are former Anglican priests who have taken a special two-year course and two are men in their fifth year of studying for the priesthood and have undertaken their entire formation within the Ordinariate. It is expected that the 10 candidates will be ordained priests next year. Established in 2011, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham follows the Anglicanorum coetibus, a 2009 apostolic constitution issued by Pope Benedict XVI, which allows Anglicans to become Catholics while retaining elements of their heritage. The ordination Mass will take place on 17 June at St James’s church in Spanish Place. Cardinal Pell, the head of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, will be the ordaining bishop. He will be assisted by Mgr Keith Newton, the ordinary of Britain’s Ordinariate.

Irish nuns ‘disillusioned’

Religious sister Una Agnew (above) who is a well-known expert on the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, has spoken out against the “widespread denigration of “nuns as a category of women in society”. Sr Una, a member of the St Louis congregation, told The Tablet that the “mistakes made by a small percentage of nuns in the past loom large”, and that religious sisters today feel that they are condemned before they are heard. The former lecturer at the Jesuit Milltown Institute was speaking after the publication of a letter to The Irish Times in which she said Irish nuns were “disillusioned and disheartened” by recent negative media coverage and suggested that it was time to reject the caricatures of nuns repeated “ad nauseam” in the media. “If we remain in the current impasse … there will be at least one or two generations of young people who believe nuns are a waste of space and the sooner they disappear the better,” she warned.

Ex-head on trial

A former head teacher at a Catholic boarding school in the Highlands has gone on trial in Inverness, accused of assaulting boys in his care. Fr Benedict Seed, 83, is accused of assaulting eight pupils, including hitting boys with a hockey stick and a golf shoe, at the now closed Fort Augustus Abbey school in the 1970s and 1980s. Appearing under the name Thomas Michael Seed, he denies all charges.

Compiled by Lorna Donlon