Parish reflects on its past
Just days after the nation recalled the 71st anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, members of the history group of Our Lady and St Paulinus Church, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, launched the...
View ArticleDownton Abbey is a fantasy of the past. That’s why we love it
So, how was it for you? I mean, of course, Downton Abbey, the one television programme that gripped the nation last night, and the one staple of conversation today, indeed, possibly all week, until we...
View ArticleWhen Christ lay dying on the battlefield
To the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, Hill 35 must have seemed an insignificant dent in the landscape. For a Gloucestershire man those slight ridges emerging from the flatlands around the Belgian town...
View ArticleWho was to blame for the First World War?
Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark Penguin, £30As the centenary of the Great War approaches, and with Europe still in many ways reliving the trauma, we continue to ask...
View ArticleA peacemaker betrayed
January 22 was the anniversary of the death of Pope Benedict XV in 1922. His was the second shortest papacy of the last century but it encompassed one of the century’s most phenomenal events: the First...
View ArticleFrom the First World War to Syria, the unending heroism of the Catholic priest
I wrote a blog for April 7 on the woes of the priesthood: isolated, overworked, derided by society and so on. That is one side of the coin, certainly. But there is another side, a side that shows the...
View ArticleD-Day landings: Pope pays tribute to ‘heavy sacrifice’ of soldiers
Pope Francis has paid tribute to the “heavy sacrifice” of soldiers who fought against Nazism on the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. In a message to the Church in France the Pope hailed “the...
View ArticlePope Francis in emotional plea for peace
Pope Francis appealed to countries currently engaged in conflict to stop fighting, in an impromptu addition to his weekly Angelus address in St Peter’s Square yesterday. The Pope said he was talking...
View ArticleWhy Catholicism’s credibility survived the Great War
August 4 marks the centenary of the entry of Great Britain and her Empire into the First World War, and the Bishops of England and Wales have asked all their clergy to mark this and other anniversaries...
View ArticleThe fight to honour Ireland’s heroes of the First World War
Ireland’s war began early in 1914: not in clashes between the Imperial German Army and soldiers in Irish regiments, as so often believed, but at sea. On August 5, 1914, the cruiser HMS Amphion sank the...
View ArticleMorning Catholic must-reads: 29/08/14
Pope Francis will honour the First World War dead in a ceremony on the Italian border with Slovenia on September 13 (video). Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos has said that he refuses to have a...
View ArticleMorning Catholic must-reads: 15/09/14
Christ’s love “is able to sustain” the love between a husband and wife, the Pope said as he witnessed the marriage of 20 couples yesterday (full text, full video). In his Angelus address the Pope asked...
View ArticleMorning Catholic must-reads: 07/11/14
The United Nations should consider “challenging Pakistan over its blasphemy law”, Vatican Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran has said. Francis will visit his homeland in 2016, according to Argentine human...
View ArticleHunger Games and World War: some things are worth fighting for
You wouldn’t be alone if you assumed that a blockbuster fantasy aimed at teens and young adults would surely present rather a simplified, black and white picture of moral issues such as propaganda,...
View ArticleA friend who told us the truth
The life and work of Sir Martin Gilbert, who died last month at 78, should be noted by Catholics with gratitude. In the long and often painful relationship between Catholics and Jews, Gilbert’s...
View ArticleA century after Gallipoli, the Turks are now our friends
Today is the day when the world remembers, or rather ought to remember, the Armenian Genocide. Various commemorations have been taking place in Yerevan, the capital of present-day Armenia, which have...
View ArticleMorning Catholic must-reads: 01/05/15
Divisions between Christians “must not be seen as inevitable”, the Pope has told members of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (full text, video). Francis will soon visit the Great...
View ArticleMarried couple who raised 10 children recognised as venerable by the Pope
An Italian married couple who raised 10 children have been recognised as venerable by Pope Francis. Sergio and Domenica Bernardini are among 12 people who were recognised by the Pontiff this week...
View ArticleJohn Hinton: the urbane writer who never missed a great story
I regret to inform readers that John Hinton, a longstanding contributor to the Catholic Herald, has died aged 72. John had worked for the paper in various capacities since 2003. I first met him in 2005...
View ArticleThe First World War veterans who fought for the faith
A Hobbit, a Wardrobe and a Great War by Joseph Loconte, Nelson Books, £16.99 It cannot have been easy to shock Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury queen. Bohemian to the core, she presided over a circle of...
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