Travel & Pilgrimage

Preston – a rare Catholic cityscape

preston is today a city of some 120,000 inhabitants. it is situated on the north bank of the ribble in lancashire. it is relatively unique a...

Priest jailed on terror charges dies awaiting third bail hearing in India

fr stan swami sj (file photo courtesy of jesuits.org )   the 84-year-old fr stan swami sj died just ahead of his third scheduled bail h...

The Passion(fruit) of St Swithin

what an amazingly versatile food an egg is. i well remember as a child the slogan of “go to work on an egg”, the very successful advertising...

Reappraising Rome’s rock-star emperor

like the emperor nero, the british museum knows how to put on a show. that hangar of a space bearing the sainsbury name can sometimes overwh...

Lucien de Guise

Seville's ancient alchemy of agony and ecstasy

goodness knows what non-catholics, let alone atheists, must make of it all when visiting seville. you can’t move in the capital of southern ...

Conquest and consent

the arab conquests by justin marozzi apollo, £18.99, 256 pages  between 634 and 750 ad, arabs created an empire larger than those of al...

Fighting for victims

nazir afzal is the new head of the cssa, the church’s safeguarding body, a role he took on only recently. he’s a muslim: it was a widely wel...

Melanie McDonagh

Believing in Miracles

graham greene once remarked that the biggest problem of our age lies in the fact that we have lost the ability to believe in miracles and th...

Leprosy charity fears disruption of services due to Covid-19 pandemic

countries where leprosy is endemic have some of the lowest rates for covid-19 vaccinations in the world, says the st francis leprosy guild. ...

Catholic churches burnt down in western Canada

two catholic churches on indigenous land in western canada burnt to the ground on saturday, less than a week after two other nearby churches...