The Religious Sisters of Charity says it is confident of a “positive outcome” on the legal transfer of its land shares for the building of the new National Maternity Hospital.

The Vatican is launching a new international exorcism training course in response to a growing demand for priests skilled in tackling demonic possession.

A group campaigning for the repeal of the constitutional amendment that prohibits abortion has confirmed it returned funding it received from an international organisation following correspondence with the ethics watchdog.

The prevalence of suicide, declining vocations, and Mass attendance are just some of the issues that the country’s bishops will discuss with senior Vatican officials when they travel to Rome tomorrow for a 10-day pilgrimage.

A Social Democrat candidate in the last general election is seeking a meeting with the Bishop of Cloyne after he was dropped from reading at Mass because of his support for repealing abortion laws and his political affiliations.

It has emerged that the Pope may visit Ireland in 2018 to attend the Catholic Church’s World Meeting of Families which is due to be held in Dublin.

An activist for the Social Democrats in Cork has claimed that he has been taken from the roster of readers at Cobh Cathedral because of his party's stance on repealing the Eighth.

The government ignore everything except the latest crisis and then reach for a quick-fix solution, writes Michael Clifford

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said in The Irish Catholic, July 30, that the future of the Irish

The Government has rejected claims that State funding for marriage preparation courses provided by the Catholic support agency Accord was withdrawn because of the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage.

Leo Varadkar revealed he is gay on live radio this morning.

Some 20 years after predictions were made of a ‘Catholic restoration’, the Church finds itself lost in modern Ireland, writes TP O’Mahony

There has been a dramatic drop in the number of men training to be priests in Ireland.

Murdered man Tom O’Gorman was an inoffensive man who would never fall out with anyone, friends said.

A senior Vatican-based cardinal has accused Fr Tony Flannery, the founder of the Association of Catholic Priests, of undermining the faith of Catholics.

This week's highlights include Cracking Crime, which revisits the murder of a prison officer from Kerry.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has dismissed claims from a senior Vatican official that politicians should resign rather than support Ireland’s abortion laws.

The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, has been criticised for disrespecting the Pope after he was captured on video playing with his phone during an audience with the Pontiff.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has welcomed proposals by the bishops that lay people could yet hold services in this country if there are not enough priests for every parish.

Catholic bishops are drawing up radical new plans for parishes to hold Sunday services without priests.

Defence minister Alan Shatter has been accused of being prejudiced against the Catholic Church over his refusal to allow the army to provide a guard of honour for a procession during the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin recently.

The Pro-Life Campaign recently released the results of a Millward Brown Lansdowne conducted poll which was carried out on a quota controlled sample of 979 people aged 18+ between May 2 – 15.

The sight of married men baptising babies and presiding at weddings in the Catholic Church will be novel to the faithful.

The Catholic Church’s rules on celibacy are to be relaxed next month, when Ireland’s first group of married deacons are ordained.

Columnist Mary Kenny’s call for an inquiry that categorises the abuse by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth will devastate victims and stop them getting help, child abuse survivor Marie Collins said.

Speculation is growing that the Vatican may appoint a Bishop to assist Cardinal Sean Brady who is under growing pressure to stand aside over his role in the Fr Brendan Smyth affair.

Cash-strapped priests are facing a significant pay cut, which will see their meagre salaries plunge by 25% in the space of just two years.

A Vatican report ordered by Pope Benedict XVI in the wake of the Murphy and Ryan inquiries into clerical child sex abuse is to be published in Rome later.

Catholic leaders have launched a stinging attack on organisers of the IFTAs for presenting an award to suspended RTÉ series Prime Time Investigates.

VATICAN chiefs have ordered trainee priests at Ireland’s national seminary at Maynooth to be physically separated from the university’s 8,000 lay students.

THE Catholic primate, Cardinal Sean Brady, is confident the new papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, will forge “strong and fruitful” links between Ireland and the Holy See.

IN her column, Colette Browne (Opinion, Nov 30) writes that “perhaps members of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) who have been screaming bias at every available opportunity since the sorry episode first came to light, would like the entire board of RTÉ to commit hari-kari as a token of their sorrow”.

THE Vatican is believed to be meeting resistance from Irish archbishops to its plans to cut the number of dioceses by up to a half — meaning the country would need fewer bishops.

The Bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty, is to step down for health reasons at the age of 71.

WHEN a new foreign minister in a new Irish Government starts closing down embassies, we should be worried.

CUTBACKS by the HSE to child and family support services would be a significantly shortsighted measure and a possible reaction to financial mismanagement and overspending in other areas of the services, the head of a leading children’s charity has warned.

THE diocese of Cloyne has said it has “no plans” to use church basket collections to pay damages to victims of clerical sex abuse in civil cases.

Dr Martin has not been open about the plan to pay abuse compensation with parish funds, writes Michael Kelly.

A claim that the Dublin Archdiocese is using parish funds to cover the cost of clerical sexual abuse claims has been rejected by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

A PRIEST in the Diocese of Ferns has launched a stinging attack accusing the “wives and mothers of Ireland” of failing to deal with the abuse of their children by other family members.

A Catholic priest is claiming that the "wives and mothers of Ireland" are as culpable as the Church hierarchy in the cover-up of sexual abuse.

A SENIOR priest who recently warned that the Dublin diocese could face bankruptcy unless it tackled its financial crisis has resigned as chairman of the Priests’ Council.

A senior priest, who recently warned that the Dublin Catholic archdiocese was on the verge of bankruptcy, has today resigned his position as chairman of the Priest's Council.

THE child protection tsar in Cloyne wrote to clerical abuse victims to tell them he had done everything he could to help them obtain justice — even though the Cloyne report revealed the opposite to be true.

THE former child protection delegate in the Diocese of Cloyne has attempted to explain his failure to report complaints of child sex abuse by saying the accused priests were often aged or sick.

Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan - who was responsible for child protection in the diocese of Cloyne - has admitted that he should have resigned as a child protection delegate.

THE revelation that the Dublin Archdiocese — the country’s largest with over one million registered Catholics — is close to financial collapse is likely to be mirrored in other parts of the Church in Ireland.

DUBLIN parishes and the archdiocese are close to financial collapse mainly due to falling collections as Mass attendance declines.

The Dublin Catholic archdiocese is on the brink of financial collapse due to the volume of compensation payouts to victims of clerical abuse, it has been claimed.