Pope Francis has encouraged married couples to be more open to the gift of life.

His words come as Catholics routinely use contraceptive methods to limit their pregnancies and as much of the world faces a looming demographic disaster.

In his Sunday Angelus address, the pope said to spouses, it is “essential to be open to the gift of life, to the gift of children”.

“They are the most beautiful fruit of love, the greatest blessing from God, a source of joy and hope for every home and all of society. Have children!”.

The pope recounted how a member of the Vatican’s Gendarmerie Corps brought his eight children to a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica that the pope presided over on Saturday. Pope Francis described seeing the family as “a great consolation.”

“It was beautiful to see them,” he said. “Please, be open to life, to what God may send you.”

A bill is to be introduced to parliament soon to legalise ‘assisted dying’ in England and Wales.

The change in the law has been proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.

She will put forward a private members’ bill and while those rarely become law, it is thought that this may be an exception.

The Labour leader, Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is personally in favour of assisted dying, but has said he would allow his MPs to have a free vote on the matter,

While he won’t publicly champion the bill, out of respect for parliamentary procedure, he also does not intend to frustrate the bill’s passage, as has sometimes happened with previous private members bills.

Labour leader Ivana Bacik has urged the Government to enact legislation that would ensure religious orders are forced to contribute in full to redress schemes for abuse victims. Orders like the Jesuits and the Spiritans have already paid out millions each.

Addressing the Taoiseach in the Dáil, Deputy Bacik called on Government to change the law before the next general election.

She said: “Any organisation which facilitates abuse, and even covered it up, must be compelled to pay redress”.

The Labour leader said the Government already called on religious orders to pay their share of redress, but added that appeals to moral duty cannot be relied upon.

She shared with the Taoiseach a Bill that Labour has drafted to ensure that religious orders will be compelled to contribute in full to redress schemes.

In response, “the Taoiseach confirmed that he would refer our Labour Bill to the Attorney General, who is already examining mechanisms to ensure religious orders pay up”, she said.

Denominational education should be abolished according to Labour MEP, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, a frequent critic of faith-based schools.

Debating the issue with David Quinn of The Iona Institute on the Today Show with Claire Byrne, Ó Ríordáin rejected any model of divestment, based on parental wishes, that could leave a portion of schools with a faith-based ethos.

“Fundamentally, I believe that we need to absolutely separate church and state when it comes to education. I don’t understand why, in this day and age, that we need to have religion as the overarching context in which our children attend school”, he said.

When he asked if he wanted to remove religion entirely from schools, he agreed, adding: “I do want to remove religion completely. I just don’t think it stands up to any educational scrutiny, that this is what’s best for children”.

A new global project examines why rejection of belief in God has grown across the globe and says that there are now more atheists than theists in Britain.

The research team from Queen’s University Belfast found that the common notion of the “purposeless unbeliever,” lacking a sense of ultimate meaning in life, objective morality, and strong values is not accurate, challenging the stereotype that atheists lead lives devoid of meaning, morality, and purpose.

One of the researchers, Dr Aiyana Willard, added: “Similarly, the common claim among some atheist commentators that individuals become or remain theists because they are less intelligent or emotionally weaker than others is not true.”

Professor Jonathan Lanman said the key factor in determining belief in God is “the extent to which one is socialised to be a theist”.

“Many other popular theories, such as intelligence, emotional stoicism, broken homes, and rebelliousness, do not stand up to empirical scrutiny”, in terms of determining theism or atheism.

While anti-religious parents do not substantially impact whether their children believe in God, they do strongly influence whether their children are morally opposed to religion, he said.

Budget 2025 is allocating funding to expanding access to the government’s free IVF scheme, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has announced. There is increasing use of IVF as so many couples delay trying to start a family until they are well into their thirties.

There are also plans to further expand the scheme next year to include couples requiring third party eggs or sperm.

The scheme’s initial rollout launched only last year.

Pope Francis called laws legalising abortion “murderous” and “criminal” during a visit to the tomb of the Belgian King Baudouin.

The King chose to temporarily abdicate the throne rather than sign a law legalising abortion in 1990. He ruled from 1951 until his death in 1993 at the age of 63.

On his flight back to Rome, Pope Francis repeated that the choice of King Baudouin to abdicate for three days in order not to sign a “law of death” was “courageous” and exceptional, adding that the Catholic king was able to do this because he was holy. “The process of beatification will go forward because they gave me proof of this,” he said.

“Women have a right to life, to their life, and to the life of their children. Let’s not forget to say this,” the pontiff continued.

“An abortion is a homicide. … it kills a human being. The doctors who carry this out are hitmen … And on this there is no debate.”

Pope Francis’ comments on abortion come as Belgium discusses whether to extend the country’s legal limit of abortion, which is up to the 12th week of pregnancy for any reason.

For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers, reports the New York Times.

They attend services more often, with a 3pc increase over 25 years ago, and they are more likely to identify as religious than young women.

“We’ve never seen it before,” Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, said referring to young men surpassing young women in religiosity.

Almost 40 percent of female Gen Z’s (born between 1997 and 2012) describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 34 percent of males, according to a survey last year.

Ryan Burge cites research where among those born between 1940 and 1970 women are 2-4 points more likely to be attending weekly religious services than men.

But that changes for those born around 1970-1975 as female weekly attendance bottoms out, but male attendance increases. The weekly rates for men born around 2000 is 25% – about three points higher than men who were born twenty-five years earlier and 2-3 points higher than young adult women.

Young adult men who never attend religious services is 32%. A decline of four points from middle-aged men and about two points lower than younger women.

A new study confirms a strong correlation between parental divorce and a wide range of negative child outcomes.

The authors from Austria, Germany and the UK published their work in the Journal of Public Economics.

They found that boys have lower levels of educational attainment, worse labour market outcomes and are more likely to die early.

They reported that girls also have lower levels of educational attainment, and they are also more likely to have children at an early age, but lose less in terms of employment.

A quarter of all weddings that took place in Ireland last year were broadly ‘New Age’ in character, while Christian ceremonies declined to just over a third of the total.

That’s according to research published by the Iona Institute using findings culled from CSO data.

The paper shows that Catholic weddings accounted for 91.4pc of the total in 1994 and last year this had fallen to just 34.3pc of all ceremonies

Church of Ireland weddings fell in that time from 2.6pc of the total to 1.1pc

Weddings performed by ‘Entheos Ireland’, the ‘Spiritualist Union of Ireland’, and other, similar organisations account for almost a quarter of the total and rising.

The author of the paper, Breda O’Brien said unless the Churches find a way to respond, “the present trends will probably worsen from their point of view and will very likely extend to funerals as well in due course.”

Noting that many couples still want “a spiritual dimension” to their weddings, she said this “provides an opportunity for the Churches”.

She recommended a rethink of practices, such as rules regarding venues.