Tag Archives: social justice

On the 13th June (Memorial of St. Anthony of Padua, Patron of the Poor) Pope Francis published his Message for the 7th Annual World Day of the Poor, on Sunday 19th November, 2023.  The theme for this year’s Message is:  “Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor” (Tob 4:7)  This Message is a reflection on the Book of ...

Spirituality grounds us and informs our daily experience of acting and reacting in relation to people, circumstances and things. For spirituality pervades the whole of life, affecting all life’s stages of development, and so is to be regarded rather as an inner energy than as a set of formalised practices.  Nor can true spirituality be imposed from without.  Rather it ...

Wednesday, April 26th, 2023 is the 239th anniversary of Nano Nagle’s death (1784).  Each year it is a landmark moment for our lives as Presentation people, when we take time out to give thanks for Nano’s life and for her inspiration, as a determined and committed advocate for social change alongside compassionate care, with a resolute conviction that she was ...

Mother Earth is clearly urging a call to action. Nature is suffering. Oceans filling with plastic and turning more acidic. Extreme heat, wildfires and floods, have affected millions of people. Even these days, we are still trying to get back on track from COVID-19, a worldwide health pandemic linked to the health of our ecosystem. Climate change, man-made changes to nature as ...

Today, all of us are rediscovering our fragility. We are rediscovering that inhabiting the Earth as a common home requires much more of us.  It requires solidarity in accessing the goods of creation as a “common good”, and solidarity in applying the fruits of research and technology to make our “Home” healthier and more liveable for all. In this, we ...

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has confirmed our worst fears. We are not doing enough and we are not doing it fast enough. We are facing warming beyond 2 degrees meaning irreversible change and mass extinction. What we know for certain is that the world’s poorest will be the hardest hit, that those who have contributed least ...

Today, 8 February, is the Feast of St Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese nun, who as a child had the traumatic experience of being a victim of human trafficking.  St. Josephine was beatified in 1992 and canonised shortly after on October 2000 by Pope John Paul II.  She is the first person to be canonised from Sudan and is the patron saint ...

We reach the final day of the octave of prayer for Christian Unity (18 to 25 January 2023). The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (WPCU) is celebrated, as an ecumenical initiative in which Christians from all over the world belonging to different traditions and confessions, gather spiritually in prayer for the unity of the Church.  The theme of this ...

We prepare to mark the 6th World Day of the Poor on Sunday, 13th November (a Day established by Pope Francis in his Apostolic Letter “Misericordia et Miser” in 2016, to celebrate the end of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy). This day has been an important focus point for advocacy and action every year since then. Its aim after all is ...

The Nativity of Mary is one of the most ancient Marian feasts (8th September). It is thought that this feast originated in connection with the Feast of the dedication of a church dedicated to Mary, now the Church of St Ann, in Jerusalem in the 6th century. Tradition holds that this is where the house of Mary’s parents, Joachim and ...