Visit your local grotto

FACED with a crisis in vocations, falling church attendance and a society now floundering in a spiritual vacuum, we are approaching make-your-mind-up time both for the laity and the religious of the Catholic Church.

In the diocese of Cork and Ross consultations through the diocesan strategy group, with clergy and laity, are gaining momentum.

This is the 50th anniversary of the Marian Year, when almost every town and village in Ireland erected a grotto to Our Lady and turned to her in prayer. Facing into the month of May, we should gather again at our grottos and remind Our Lady that we are almost out of (spiritual) wine.