The Gift of Life – A Shared Responsibility Pastoral Message of Bishop Kevin Doran   The Mystery of Life In the Summer of 2016, I noticed a pair of swans with their five recently hatched cygnets on the Garavogue river. By the following Spring, they were almost fully grown. Their muddy brown feathers had been...

Opening of Catholic Schools Week Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo Sunday 28th January 2018   Homily of Rev Dr Michael Duignan, Episcopal Vicar for Education and Formation in the Diocese of Elphin   Catholic Schools Week 2018 calls on the whole Catholic school community to become acquainted with the richness of Catholic wisdom on...

World Day of Peace – 1st January 2018 Homily of Bishop Kevin at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo We come together this morning on the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, to give thanks for the blessings we have received in this past year and to ask God’s blessings in the year...

Feast of the Holy Family – Homily of Bishop Kevin (Sallynoggin Church, Dublin) 31st December 2017 People rarely go anywhere these days without a camera, so family photographs are more easily shared than ever before. These photographs capture moments in time but they don’t always succeed in capturing the energy, the intimacy and the emotion...

Holy Innocents: Then and Now Homily of Bishop Kevin Doran, 28th December 2017 Today we mark the Feast of the Holy Innocents. These are the children who, according to St Matthew, were massacred by order of King Herod, because he was determined to make sure that no child was left alive who might be a...

Homily of Bishop Kevin at Midnight Mass, Christmas Eve 24th December 2017 Some of you may be familiar with a story written by The Greek philosopher, Plato, in one of his dialogues called “The Republic”. It is called the Allegory of the Cave. He asks his listeners to imagine a big cave, deep underground, where...

  I was born almost exactly six months after Christmas; so my first Christmas was spent in the comfort of my mother’s womb. The only gift I got was the only gift I really needed, the gift of life. I was the first child for my parents, and I imagine it was both an anxious...

Homily of Bishop Kevin Doran at the Ordination of Martin Reidy as a Permanent Deacon Church of the Risen Christ – Third Sunday of Advent The Lord is Near – Joyful Anticipation Many of you here will have had the experience of looking forward to someone coming home from overseas, a son or daughter, a...

Ordination of Tony Larkin as a Permanent Deacon, Church of Saints Peter and Paul Athlone, December 8th 2017 Homily of Bishop Kevin Doran If you sit down to watch an episode of Downton Abbey, or some other series, it will often begin with a reminder of what happened in the previous episode and it usually...

Address by Very Rev Dr. Michael Duignan, Chancellor of the Diocese of Elphin, 23rd November 2017 As Evelyn O’Donnell, Chairperson of the Board of Directors has already outlined the founding force behind the establishment of Boyle Family Life Centre was the Catholic Diocese of Elphin. Over the years Bishop Conway and Bishop Jones have always...