The escalating violence across the Middle East could have devastating consequences for Christian communities in the region, according to the international charity, Aid to the Church in Need.

“The Christian presence in the Middle East must not die out,” said Tyrone-native Regina Lynch, Executive President of ACN International. “A new spiral of violence could push already fragile communities beyond the point of survival.”

Even in Iran, small communities continue to live their faith, often under very difficult circumstances. Converts in particular remain especially vulnerable. “The longing for freedom and dignity among peoples in the region is legitimate,” Lynch said. “But the price of renewed war would be extremely high. Civilians always suffer most, and Christians are often among the most defenceless.”

In Iraq, a renewed wave of destruction “would be almost impossible for these communities to endure,” Lynch warned.

In Syria, uncertainty persists and extremist ideologies continue to pose risks to minorities perceived as ‘Western’, including Christians.

In Lebanon thousands of people have already been displaced.

In Gaza, the humanitarian situation remains catastrophic. Any further disruption to aid deliveries would endanger the survival of the small remaining Catholic parish and the thousands of people who rely on its assistance.

In the West Bank, many Christian families had hoped for an increase in pilgrims and visitors during the Easter season. Renewed instability threatens their livelihoods, as tourism remains a primary source of income.

A new report from the Irish Catholic Bishops provides evidence of a ‘quiet revival’ of religiosity among some young Irish people.

The study evaluates data from two recent Iona Institute surveys conducted by Amárach Research, as well as European Social Study surveys and other academic sources.

It found Ireland remains among the more religious countries in Europe, on measures of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and frequency of prayer. Among western European countries, it is one of very few outliers with a relatively high level of overall religiosity.

Among Catholics specifically, Ireland also ranks towards the higher end of (especially western) European countries on measures of weekly Mass attendance and daily prayer.

While key measures of Irish religiosity have declined significantly since the European Social Survey began in 2002/03, the most recent round – 2023/24 – shows a strong “uptick” in religious affiliation and religious practice.

This effect is most strongly evident among those aged 16-29 years, across both Catholics and Protestants.

EU money can be used for cross-border abortion access, the European Commission has decided.

This means women in countries with strong pro-life laws, such as Malta and Poland, can travel to States with permissive policies to access abortion paid for by EU money.

The Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe condemned the decision saying the initiative is, in fact, an instrument of political pressure on Member States, which uses the European Social Fund+ to bypass  national legislations on abortion.

“Believing that an ideology can be imposed from above is an approach that openly conflicts with the principle of subsidiarity, the foundation of the European legal system”.

The move marks an unusual step, as healthcare policy is typically determined at a national level.

On Thursday, the Commission confirmed member states can use the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), to pay the costs of providing access to abortion for women who are barred from doing so in their home country.

However, the Commission stopped short of creating a new funding mechanism, which was requested by the European Parliament in a non-binding resolution adopted in December.

The Commission’s decision came in response to a call made by the citizens’ initiative “My Voice, My Choice” for the creation of an EU solidarity mechanism to guarantee safe and affordable access to abortion for all women.

Bishop Niall Coll of Raphoe has said young people interested in the Church are looking for enduring truth, not endless discussion or progressive experimentation. Recent Amarach Research polls published by The Iona Institute show greater openness to religion among those aged 18-24, something that is emerging in other countries as well such as the US, the UK and France.

Speaking at the launch of a book “Transformative Renewal in the Catholic Church”, by Fr John O’Brien CSSp,  Bishop Coll spoke of those born roughly 1995–2012: the first generation to have never known life without a smartphone.

“Growing up (since 1995) entirely in a post-Christian, digital, morally fragmented culture they have no inherited memory of Catholic Ireland. Paradoxically, this leads many of them to seek clarity, coherence and tradition”.

“Often converts, they are drawn to doctrinal solidity, sacramental depth and continuity with the Church’s tradition. For them the Church lies in truth that is intelligible and demanding, not adaptability”, he said.

“Having grown up amid constant choice, information overload and moral ambiguity, they are less interested in conversation and more in formation that produces conviction and confidence.”

Controversial legislation to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in England and Wales is set to fail because of a lack of parliamentary time.

The Private Members Bill was proposed by a Labour MP, but did not have the official backing of the Government. While it narrowly passed the House of Commons, it has met with a barrage of resistance in the House of Lords.

The Labour chief whip in the Lords, Roy Kennedy, said this week that the government would not give the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill more time before the May deadline, when all legislation must have passed or automatically falls.

The team behind the bill also confirmed they now expected the legislation in its current form to fail.

The debate will now focus on what happens after May, with proponents of a change in the law saying the public polling and the repeated backing of MPs means that this legislation should be given a second chance.

However, the government is likely to continue keeping the issue at arms length, since there is no single cabinet position on the issue and ministers like Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood are implacably hostile to the change.

Letting people work from home would be the most effective and cheapest way to help reverse falling birth rates, a new report has said.

In many countries across the globe, birth rates have fallen well below the 2.1 replacement rate required for a stable population. Ireland’s is 1.5 and is projected to fall to 1.3 by 2037.

A working paper by economists at King’s College London and Stanford found that in the US, remote work led to 291,000 more births a year, based on figures from 2024. It accounted for 8.1pc of all births that year.

The study found that when both partners worked from home, women’s fertility rate rose by around 0.5 children.

The economists said, in the US,  this one change had a bigger impact on birth rates than government spending on early childhood care and education.

Prof Cevat Aksoy, of King’s, said the UK and other countries experiencing sinking birth rates should take lessons from the study’s observations.

Ireland’s education system should resist ideological capture and short-term novelties, the National Conversation on Education has been told by an agency of the Catholic Bishops.

In a submission, the Catholic Education Partnership suggests starting the conversation with a focus on purpose, offering that education should be “ordered to ordered to the flourishing of the person and to the common good”.

This means a focus on “the kind of person it helps to form: truthful, resilient, compassionate, and capable of responsibility”.

This involves adopting an integral vision of the person with a definite ethos.

It underlines that “Ethos matters as education is never value-neutral, and when values are unnamed, they are imposed without accountability”.

By contrast, a “transparent statement of ethos builds trust with parents and enables respectful dialogue”.

It added that education “should pursue an integral humanism, rooted in the dignity of every child, honouring parental primacy, supporting real plurality of ethos, and investing in teacher formation and leadership.”

One of Ireland’s leading journalists said he was ‘Catholic shamed’ by anti-religious ‘bigots’ after he received a torrent of criticism on social media for having worn ashes on his forehead while appearing on TV on Ash Wednesday last week.

Fionnán Sheahan, Ireland Editor of The Irish Independent, was a guest panellist on Virgin Media’s The Tonight Show last week discussing the day’s political events while bearing the unmistakeable sign of the ritual that marks the beginning of Lent. And viewers noticed and proceeded to comment and criticise him on platforms such as X.

Writing in The Sunday Independent, he said that thoughtless critics mattered little to him, but what did surprise him were those who said he “should have expected to be subjected to negativity”.

Why, he asked, “in liberal, secular Ireland, it is now normal that someone should be ridiculed for identifying as a Catholic?”

Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast this week, he added: ““I went down the [social media] rabbit hole and was looking at some of the comments and it was people who look back to their other posts and go, ‘Okay, you’re claiming to be kind of a person of liberal and open-minded thought – but when it comes to this, you become a bigot’”.

He asked rhetorically if Irish people are “not as open-minded as we claim to be?”

A recent Amarach poll commissioned by The Iona Institute found that a quarter of Irish people would be happy to see the Catholic Church vanish from Irish society completely.

Only one in ten Gen Zers in the UK have had children at 23 compared with almost one in four millennials at a similar age, while the former are also far less likely to have left home in young adulthood, a study has revealed.

The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) follows the lives of about 19,000 young people across the UK classified as Gen Z, who were born between 2000 and 2002.

However, despite the significant decrease in younger people having children, the vast majority of Gen Z still expressed a strong desire to become parents in the future. Some 61 per cent said they would definitely like to have children or have more offspring if they were already parents.

The MCS also found that more than two thirds of Gen Z, or 68 per cent, were living with their parents at the age of 23. This number is three times the proportion of millennials who were living at home at a comparative age a decade earlier.

Lead researcher, Charlotte Booth, said the findings suggested Gen Zers were delaying adult milestones compared with previous generations. She said this was “partly due to challenging economic conditions and the high cost of living, making it unaffordable for young people to move out”.