Faith formation should be removed from all schools, including denominational ones, according to Paddy Monahan, a councillor with Social Democrats who is also a policy officer with ‘Education Equality’, which is a strong critic of denominational education.

The Constitution protects the right of parents to educate children according to their wishes with the help of the State, which has always funded Church-run schools. A recent survey by the Department of Education showed 60pc of parents surveyed want such schools for their children.
Writing in the Irish Times, Paddy Monahan said religious faith formation should be moved outside of school hours.

This would mean “parents who want religious education and sacramental preparation for their children can still have it – by actively choosing it outside school. Equally, parents who do not wish their children to face daily exclusion and unwanted religious instruction, as is currently the case, will have this wish respected”.

Recently Social Democrats TD Jen Cummins made a similar call.

The head of the Catholic Church in Pakistan has expressed doubts about a government review of a court decision to confirm the ‘marriage’ of a Christian girl to an older man who had abducted her.

The case, one of a series of such incidents, dates back to July 2025, when 13-year-old Maria Shahbaz, a resident of Lahore, was taken by force, subjected to conversion to Islam, and married off to 30-year-old Shaheryar Ahmad.

Her parents reported the abduction to police, but a court deemed the girl was at least 18, despite evidence to the contrary, and validly married to the man.

Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad, president of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference (PCBC), voiced skepticism of the Government’s review.

“These issues often subside by the time such committees make their reports public. The process is deliberately delayed so that people forget,” he told EWTN News.

For decades, rights advocates have called for stronger measures to prevent the abduction and forced religious conversion of girls from minority communities.

At least 515 such cases were reported between 2021 and 2025, according to the Center for Social Justice. Hindu girls accounted for 69% (353 cases), followed by Christian girls at 31% (160 cases).

Professor David Albert Jones, research fellow in bioethics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and committee secretary of the new Augustine Bioethics Network, said, “There has never been a greater need for serious ethical reflection on healthcare: on issues such as assisted suicide, conscientious objection, resources allocation, gene editing, abortion and the use of artificial intelligence.

“Currently, the majority of academic bioethics mixes a focus on autonomy with utility. In contrast, the Augustine Bioethics Network has been established to discover and give voice to a more profound vision of bioethics that encompasses both the dignity and the vulnerability of every human person, a vision it finds in the great philosopher and theologian, Augustine of Hippo.”

France saw a record number of non-infant baptisms this Easter while Australia also saw a surge in both catechumens and candidates entering the Catholic Church.

The Archdiocese of Sydney saw 457 people joining the Church this Easter. In a February press release, Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP said the steep increase from 2025 – catechumens this year are up by 35% and candidates by 95% on last year’s figures – is “proof that the Holy Spirit is active and alive.”

Catechumens are seeking baptism into the Christian faith, while candidates are baptised Christians seeking full communion with the Catholic Church.

Official figures show similar trends in other dioceses across the country.

Meanwhile, in France, a record-breaking 21,386 people were baptised at Easter Vigils around the country, a significant rise from the 17,788 baptised in 2025, which was also a record. Ten years ago the number was just over 4,100.

Catholic schools should stop religious instruction during school time according to a left-wing TD, despite parents having a constitutional right to send their children to denominational schools.

Social Democrats TD Jen Cummins. who represents Dublin South Central and is a former chairwoman of Educate Together, accused the Government of moving at “nought miles an hour” in transferring schools from church-run to secular control.

She said some parents were sending their children to Catholic schools only because they had no other choice in their area, a decision she characterised as being “forced”.

Parents may request that their children opt-out of catechetics, but Ms Cummins is not happy with that either:

“What we are seeing in schools is children, sitting down the back of classrooms, who are being excluded from part of the curriculum. They are sitting there doing nothing, losing out on their education,” Ms Cummins said.

Her solution is to stop catechetics in Catholic schools entirely:

“I feel very strongly that religion should be done outside school time, in your own time.”

Sixty percent of parents who took part in a nationwide Department of Education survey want their local primary school to remain denominational, while 40pc say they want their local school to become multi-denominational. Forty percent of parents with children aged 12 or below took part in the survey.

The Department of Education is preparing finalised school-specific results for each of the more than 3,200 primary schools around the country. Survey results varied around the country with strongest support for the status quo in counties like Donegal and Longford and strongest support for a change in Wicklow and Dublin.

It remains to be seen what will happen when divestment is put to the vote in individual schools and more parents come forward to take part in the process. Divestment has been very slow because of lots of local resistance in practice.

The Catholic Education Partnership said the consultation represents an important step for parental involvement in educational planning.

Chief Executive Alan Hynes-Cendrzak also welcomed the strong level of support for existing denominational education.

He said Catholic education is grounded in the principle that parents are the primary educators of their children and warned that the Department of Education must remain alert to variations in local sentiment. While acknowledging that approximately 16pc of respondents indicated a preference for change he said the majority support for Catholic schooling should not be overlooked. The 16pc figure is 40pc of 40pc, that is, the 40pc who say they want multidenominational schools multiplied by a 40pc turnout.

The Church must stand with Christians and others in the Holy Land who endure attacks by Israeli settlers, an Irish bishop has said.

In a message for Holy Week, Bishop Alan McGuckian SJ, chair of the Council for Migrants, Refugees and Justice & Peace of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference said “[w]e have a duty to stand in solidarity with Christians in the Holy Land as they endure violence and potential displacement due to illegal Israeli settlements”. Attacks by extremist settlers in the West Bank have been increasing.

He said the US-Israeli war on Iran has meant the suffering of the West Bank “has not received the attention it deserves”.

“There, people – including Christians – continue to endure violence and attempts by Israeli settlers to drive them off their lands”.

This includes Taybeh, the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank, where the people have been targeted with violence, the seizure of land, and  attacks on property, farms and businesses.

The Supreme Court of Finland has found a Parliamentarian guilty of ‘hate speech’ over a pamphlet expressing a traditional understanding of sex and marriage while also acquitting her for expressing a related sentiment in a tweet of a biblical verse critiquing homosexual conduct.

In a narrow 3–2 decision, Päivi Räsänen, along with Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, has been criminally convicted for publishing “a text that insults a group”. Räsänen once served in the Finnish Government.

Finland’s highest court fined her €1,800—giving her a criminal record—and ordered the offending passages destroyed and removed from the internet.

Writing in First Things, Robert Clarke of law firm, ADF International, said the entire framework of hate speech is undermined as there is no clear standard distinguishing criminally liable speech:

“Eleven judges across three levels of the Finnish judiciary spent over six years trying to locate the line. They could not agree. The Helsinki District Court acquitted Räsänen unanimously on all charges in 2022. So did the Court of Appeal in 2023. Then the Supreme Court split 3–2. Its own rapporteur, the senior lawyer who delivers a formal recommendation to the justices, concluded that all charges should be dismissed. Two of the five justices agreed; three did not”.

The Government has ‘no plans’ to pay for egg-freezing for all young women.

The question arose after the French Government wrote to all 29-year-olds to remind them that their chances of having a child lessen greatly as they get older. This campaign highlighted an existing state-funded scheme in France that pays the expenses of egg-freezing for women aged 29 to 37, regardless of medical need.

While some commentators in Ireland panned the French campaign, Labour TD, Conor Sheehan, asked if the Government would fund a similar egg-freezing scheme here.

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has responded that there are “no plans” to do so.

The State does fund egg-freezing for medical reasons such as “in cases where a cancer diagnosis has been made” and the Department was considering expanding the scheme to other conditions that affect fertility. But not to a generalised offer unrelated to medical need.

Ireland’s fertility has plummeted to 1.5 in recent years while those struggling with fertility issues has surged, thought the cost of treatments are often prohibitive.