Thirty-six Catholic religious congregations in the State have offered 450 rooms in convents, retreat centres, former student accommodation, and houses for Ukrainian refugees.

The Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland, which represents more than 120 religious congregations, is in talks with the Department of Children and the Irish Refugee Council about its offers.

“We also have had offers to teach English and many religious-run schools have already welcomed Ukrainian children,” said David Rose, secretary general of Amri.

Some congregations in the State are also fundraising or sending aid directly to communities on the Ukrainian border, he said: “We are all praying for peace.”

Commercial surrogacy in other countries has resulted in “exploitation” and children being given to parents with whom they had no genetic link, the Department of Justice has warned.

The practice is banned in most countries across the world. Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and a small number of American states allow it. Hundreds of couples from Ireland have flown to countries like Ukraine in order to have children borne for them by Ukrainian women.

Andrew Munro of the Department of Justice told an Oireachtas committee that there are concerns about commercial surrogacy.

“We have seen some very difficult examples in the past where, to be fair, intending parents were trying to do the right thing … a lot of people got exploited by bad actors, where the egg that was purportedly supplied by a purported donor was not the egg. The child given to the intending parents had no genetic link,” Mr Munro said.

He added that there had been cases where the surrogate mother was “spirited away over a border immediately after birth,” or a birth certificate provided by local authorities “named one of the intending fathers as a father despite having no genetic material.”

“And you can see how the surrogate mother and the child and the intending parents were exploited because of weak public administration in a country,” Mr Munro said.

Parental divorce had a larger impact than parental death on youth educational attainment, according to a new study published by Demographic Research.

Based on data drawn from 17 countries, the study shows that the negative effect of parental divorce on educational attainment appears to be stronger for the children of higher-educated parents. Commenting on the study, Dr Rakib Ehsan said that experiencing divorce may have a stronger impact on these children, as they have more to lose in terms of both financial and non-financial resources.

Meanwhile, lower-educated parents traditionally have relatively low “parental resources” to begin with, meaning the “drop-off” in resources resulting from divorce is less steep — the so-called “floor effect“.

In an article at Unherd, he concludes: “For decades that mainstream has consistently undervalued the negative impacts of divorce. The Demographic Research study confirms that parental divorce can be an incredibly traumatic experience for children. While it is admittedly sensitive territory, there now needs to be a frank national conversation on the risks of marital breakdown and the degree of public respect for marriage as a social institution with moral obligations.”

https://unherd.com/thepost/study-divorce-affects-children-more-than-death/

The Sahel region of Africa where Christians are being targeted by Islamist terror groups has become “the new epicentre of terrorism“, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index.

Release International, which supports persecuted Christians around the world, has identified that Sahel is an emerging hotspot in their recent Persecution Trends report.

Partners of Release have reported that Christians are being executed by armed gangs, who target their villages and stop cars and buses on the road.

A Release International partner whose identity needs to remain hidden, said: “Christians are killed on the spot.

“If you’re kidnapped and you’re a believer, there is no possibility you will survive.

“When the jihadists attack villages, they know where the Christians live and they search them out. They are looking for believers”.

In Burkina Faso, the terror groups destroy shops, schools and official buildings, but the focus of their destruction are often churches.

Chief executive of Release International, Paul Robinson said the conflict in the Sahel is “the forgotten jihad”.

“The religiously motivated violence that has been growing in Nigeria is now being replicated in a much wider region. It is time for the world to sit up and take notice.”

The new no-fault ‘quickie’ divorce law in England and Wales is a “huge mistake” which will lead to an increase in broken families, a pro-marriage group has warned.

Colin Hart, Chairman of Coalition for Marriage (C4M), said: “We are extremely disappointed that the Government has ignored all the data and strong arguments against speeding up the process, under the delusion that no-fault divorce will somehow prevent hurt feelings and bad break ups. They will not.”

The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 came into effect on 6 April. Under the new law, couples can divorce in six months without having to give a reason and a spouse cannot contest the decision meaning they can be divorced quickly against their will.

Previously, anyone wanting to divorce their spouse had to prove their marriage had irretrievably broken down through either adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion, or separation for two years with their spouse’s consent, or five years without.

Five of those babies that appear to be of late-term gestation are now in the possession of Washington, D.C. Metro Police, which retrieved the remains Friday from members of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU).

Along with other pro-life groups, PAAU has called on the D.C. Medical Examiner to autopsy the babies’ remains to determine their manner of death in order to assess whether they died after being born, in possible violation of federal laws.

Terrisa Bukovinac, PAAU’s founder, described the processing of opening the box and examining its contents as a tearful, “completely soul-crushing experience.” She said the box was full of small turquoise-colored plastic containers, each with a small, first-trimester fetus in it, 110 in total.

There was also an inner plastic bag with five larger plastic containers. In the largest one, the aborted baby, whom the activists named Christopher X, was “whole” and appeared to be large enough to be born alive, in the women’s view.

“We often carry around a fetal model that is 22 weeks … this baby was huge,” Bukovinac recalled.

Pro-family groups have reacted with dismay to news that an EU report about the gender pay gap is excising the word “man” and “woman” and replacing the word “sex” with “gender”. In addition, the European Parliament will bypass a Plenary debate on the report that deals with an EU directive.

The report responds to a European Commission proposal to tackle the gender pay gap through the implementation of pay transparency measures. Two Committees, the EMPL and FEMM, adopted the report, “Strengthening the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women”, which amends the Commission’s proposal.

The Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE) say the report is highly problematic in its content and should have been the subject of an open and democratic debate.

“Indeed, it systematically replaces the mention of ‘sex’ with ‘gender’. The mention of ‘women’ or ‘men’ is replaced by ‘workers of different gender’”, according to a press release.

FAFCE’s Vice-President, Angelika Weichsel Mitterrutzner highlighted that, as stated by the Commission, “If the aim of this directive is to fight the gender pay gap between men and women, what kind of protection will these measures implement if no mention is made of women?“.

FAFCE’s President, Vincenzo Bassi, notes that “The text, as modified by the European Parliament, would shift the directive from being a legislative act aimed at protecting women on the basis of the EU law on sex discrimination, to a vague condemnation of pay discriminations for different grounds.

Videos of dead Ukrainian civilians, many apparently executed by Russian troops, are further evidence that “the struggle of Ukraine is a spiritual struggle against evil, against the devil and his servants,” said Ukrainian Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych.

“A mountain of corpses, rivers of blood, a sea of tears” are the ongoing reality of Ukraine, the archbishop said in his daily video message from Kyiv April 4.

Shevchuk told his people that while it is right to support the military and to keep fighting the Russian invasion, the evil at play can only be vanquished with goodness, holiness and generosity.

“Pride is fought through humility, avarice is healed by sacrifice, laziness is treated by diligence,” the archbishop said.

“If the enemy kills us (and) sows death, let us serve life, honour human life from conception to natural death,” he said.

“We see that today the enemy is robbing Ukrainians, robbing, looting,” the archbishop said. In response, Ukrainians should be “generous and support those who need works of Christian charity.”

Where the Russians are “destroying everything,” he said, Ukrainians should try to “build, get to work,” including by starting the spring planting if possible.

“Let us do good, and then evil will be defeated,” he said.

It is perfectly legal for public bodies and businesses to limit services to a single sex, the UK’s equalities watchdog declared Monday in what is seen by some as a boost for women’s rights.

There has long been uncertainty over whether services such as refuges for female rape victims are allowed to exclude trans people who were born as a man.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in the UK said that service providers wishing to limit services to a single sex are legally able to do so, provided the reasons are justified and proportionate.

The new guidance will have huge ramifications for hospitals, retailers, hospitality and sports clubs which have faced difficult issues in recent years under pressure from the trans lobby.

It makes it clear that it is legal for a gym to limit communal changing rooms to a single sex, as long as a gender neutral changing room is also provided for trans people.

Revised national guidelines for the College of Policing will allow for sacramental access at crime scenes where operationally possible following the conclusion of a working group set up in the aftermath of the murder of MP Sir David Amess.

The murder in October 2021 raised a number of questions concerning the appropriate response to granting access to priests or other ministers of religion to crime scenes in order to administer Last Rites or other sacraments to a crime victim.

The working group has developed new straightforward guidance, which has been published by the College of Policing as part of the Managing Investigations Authorised Professional Practice.

The new section, entitled ‘Requests for third party access to a scene to attend a victim’ can be found at app.college.police.uk

This Authorised Professional Practice update provides advice on balancing medical and investigative priorities and requirements, with empathy for the victim, their family and any religious needs.