After an IRA explosion in 1987 terrorized the community of Enniskillen, killed 11 Protestants, and injured scores of others, Gordon Wilson, father of one victim, said he forgave the bombers and prayed for the grace to continue to do so. Will the members of the G8 summit meeting in Northern Ireland be able to draw on a similar spirit of peace and reconciliation? More →

June 14, 2013

“We live by the work of our hands and also have some left for helping out those who are maybe less fortunate,” says the abbess of St. Mary’s, Ireland’s only Cistercian monastery for women. More →

March 16, 2012

Church attendance in Ireland has been dropping precipitously, and the number of priests being ordained from the country’s only Catholic seminary is at an all time low. “The young people, the under 40’s, have largely deserted the church in Ireland now,” says Rev. Tony Flannery of the Association of Catholic Priests. More →

July 15, 2011

“As these revelations are coming out in Europe much as they did in the United States,” says Vatican expert David Gibson, “you’re going to have great calls for accountability of bishops who covered up for abusers or moved them around to other parishes.” More →

March 19, 2010

  Read the comments of Father Mark-Ephrem Nolan, abbot of Holy Cross Benedictine Monastery in Northern Ireland, on the Irish Republican Army’s July 28, 2005 statement ending its armed struggle: The recent IRA statement is an important step on the … More →

August 5, 2005

Holy Week and Easter have special significance in Northern Ireland, a land torn by decades of religious conflict. Amid the ongoing tensions, a Benedictine monastery is working for reconciliation and unity. More →

March 25, 2005

In the latter half of the twentieth century, institutions run by Roman Catholic nuns could amount to virtual prisons for young women. Some spent their entire adult lives in these places. They were called the Magdalene Laundries, and they were in Ireland. THE MAGDALENE SISTERS chronicles the lives of three Dublin girls living in the Laundries. More →

August 22, 2003

  Editor’s Note: John O’Donohue died in 2008. BOB ABERNETHY: And now, the rediscovery of Celtic spirituality. When the pagan Celts of Ireland were converted to Christianity by St. Patrick in the fifth century, they brought with them their love … More →

March 9, 2001