An Italian court has ruled that the 70 and 57-year-old parents of a toddler are too old to raise her and have recommended she be put up for adoption. The 18-month-old girl, known as Viola, was conceived with the help of artificial insemination after the couple’s repeated applications to adopt a child were turned down...
The Scottish Government does not deserve the support of Scotland’s 800,000 Catholics because of its proposal to permit same-sex marriage, a leading bishop has said. The Bishop of Paisley, Philip Tartaglia (pictured), responding to a proposal of the Scottish Government to change the definition of marriage. Bishop Tartaglia warned that “such a government does not...
Men whose parents divorced before they were 18 are two to three times as likely to seriously consider taking their own lives as men whose parents were not divorced by that age, but daughters are not affected as badly, a new study says. According to the research women whose parents divorced by age 18 did...
Internet providers in the UK will be forced to automatically offer new customers the option of blocking pornographic and violent material, according to a prominent Cabinet minister. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this week that he is lining up a clampdown to protect children by obliging internet service providers to make sure all customers have...
Europe is currently experiencing “an atmosphere of intolerance in relation to Christians, as well as to representatives of other traditional religions” according to one of the most influential figures in the Russian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external Church relations also said that Europe needs to “discuss...
There were almost 5,000 divorces and judicial separations granted in Ireland in 2008 according to figures released by the CSO today. This compares with 22,187 marriages in the same year. However, the actual marriage breakdown rate is believed to be considerably higher than official figures indicate because the official figures do not include couples who...
A school in the UK has allowed a ten-year-old boy to return after the summer holidays as a girl because he believes he was born in the wrong sex. The boy’s mother is supporting his decision and has allowed him to dress as a girl and says he will start hormone blocker therapy, the first...
The lives of Australia’s most at-risk children “is deteriorating at an extraordinarily rapid pace,” according to a leading family law expert. Professor Patrick Parkinson of Sydney University, in a report entitled “For Kid’s Sake”, has said that the issue of family breakdown is one of the major causes of “ a large range of adverse...
The number of families headed by a single parent has increased by nearly 30 per cent in the past 10 years, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The figures, contained in the CSO’s Measuring Ireland’s Progress document, released on Tuesday, showed the number of lone parent families whose youngest child was...
Fathers who actively engage in raising their children can help their children do better in school and behave better, according to new research. Published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, the long-term study, which was conducted by Concordia University in Montreal, examined how fathers can positively influence the development of their kids through hands-on...
