David Donoghue co-delivered the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a historic global plan to end poverty by 2030.  Ahead of delivering the annual Trócaire Lenten Lecture on March 6th, he gives his thoughts on how to deliver this ambitious agreement. This global agreement – signed by every country in the world – outlines 17 goals and 169 targets for delivering a world ...

It’s beginning to snow out there, and with its gentle falling, in seconds the feathered whiteness covers everything once familiar, transforming it into something light-reflecting and different.  Snow often times brings its own silence to our busy, fast-moving world.  A sudden silence and a change of  environment where all of a sudden we can become less sure-footed,  and less certain ...

Especially in the coming weeks, as you reach for the teapot or savour your next cup of coffee give a thought as to how the leaves and coffee beans arrived to your table.  There is an alternative approach to conventional trade.  It is based on a partnership between some of the most disadvantaged farmers and workers in the developing world and ...

“Faced with the tragic protracted situations of conflict in different parts of the world, I invite all the faithful to take part in a special Day of Prayer and Fasting for Peace on February 23rd, the Friday of the First Week of Lent”. – Pope Francis Announcing this Day of Prayer and Fasting for peace and the end to all ...

Social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations. We uphold the principles of social justice when we promote gender equality or the rights of indigenous peoples and migrants, and we advance social justice when we remove barriers that people face because of gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture or disability. In 2013, migrant ...

“Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”  ― Pope Francis, Laudato Si A recent study reported in the Irish Times confirms that plastic pollution is affecting ...

We are entering the season that begins with a smudge. That smudge is a testimony to what survives. It is a witness to what abides when everything seems lost. It is a sign that what we know and love may, for a time, be reduced to dust, but it does not disappear. We belong to the God who well knows ...

The origin of this holiday for the expression of love really isn’t romantic at all—at least not in the traditional sense. St. Valentine was a Roman Priest at a time when there was an emperor called Claudius who persecuted the church. This Emperor had issued an edict that prohibited the marriage of young people. This was based on the hypothesis ...

In this the Tercentenary Year of Nano Nagle’s Birth (2018) we are drawn to make more time to understand who Nano Nagle was, and who she is for our times, especially in the light of all of the immediately visible social issues in Irish Society today, as well as those we might fail to recognise, lurking just below the surface ...

It is a New Year and indeed, that time of year when one reassesses many things past and opens doors to all things new.