Better care of the elderly must be included in public policy, according to the Bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran.

He was speaking at the Day for Life, the Church’s special day dedicated to celebrating the dignity of life from conception to natural death. This year’s theme was Caring for the Older Person and Bishop Doran addressed a homily on the subject yesterday.

“It is important that we don’t forget the lessons of the recent pandemic, when older people, especially those in nursing homes, were exposed to greater risk, because they were not adequately factored into public policy”, said the chairman of the Council for Life of the Irish Bishops’ Conference.

“Some older people do, of course, need more care, whether they live at home or in a nursing home.  Even when people are frail due to old age, we should be slow to suggest that they have nothing to contribute.  Even then, they have a mission.  So many of our older people bear witness to the Gospel by their presence, their prayer and their patience in the face of suffering or reduced mobility,” he added.

The European Court of Human Rights is set to rule tomorrow on a landmark euthanasia case.

Tom Mortier, son of Godelieva de Troyer, brought the case after his mother was put to death by lethal injection in 2012, aged 64. Mortier claims that Belgium violated the European Convention on Human Rights when it failed to properly protect the right to life of his mother -especially in light of the circumstances surrounding her death.

“My mother suffered from severe mental difficulties, and coped with depression throughout her life. She was treated for years by psychiatrists, and sadly, she and I lost contact for some time. It was during this time that she died by way of lethal injection. Never could I have imagined that we would be parted forever,” said Tom Mortier.

“The big problem in our society is that apparently we have lost the meaning of taking care of each other,” Mortier continued.

The case highlights the dangers of legalising euthanasia, and demonstrates that so-called ‘safeguards’ cannot make safe the practice of intentionally ending a life.

Drugs used to induce abortions continue to be seized by Irish authorities even as abortion has been widely and legally available since 2019.

According to the Health Product Regulatory Authority (HPRA), 42 abortion tablets were confiscated between January and July of this year. In 2021, a total of 89 tablets were seized. The figure is down from 277 in 2020, and 288 in 2019.

The drugs contain misoprostol and mifepristone which are taken in two separate doses to induce a miscarriage.

Because of the risk of adverse consequences for the mother, the HSE says women more than 9 weeks pregnant must attend a hospital to take the abortion pills.

They should not be taken if a woman is more than 12 weeks pregnant.

The Tánaiste has told an Oireachtas Committee that there should be a third gender option on the census along with female and male.

Leo Varadkar told the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality that it is “definitely something the Government is open to”.

The Tánaiste was responding to Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan who said that there were people who wanted to identify as non-binary in the census and were unable to do so.

He said that “there should be a third option”, adding that he would have to consult “statisticians and the CSO [Central Statistics Office] as to how best to do that”.

Mr Varadkar was appearing before the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality today to discuss the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality regarding pay and workplace conditions.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega blasted Catholic leaders as a “gang of murderers,” in comments amping up persecution of the church and scorning Pope Francis’ call for dialogue in the Central American country.

Catholic clergy in Nicaragua have remained mostly silent as Ortega — who won elections in 2021 after disqualifying and imprisoning opposition candidates — has persecuted priests and bishops speaking out on issues of human rights and democratic deterioration. The government also has closed church-run charitable and education initiatives, along with Catholic radio stations, and expelled priests and nuns, including the Missionaries of Charity.

In a fiery address, Ortega took aim at Nicaragua’s Catholic bishops for promoting democracy as an exit from the country’s political crisis, alleging without proof that they called on protesters to kill him during the 2018 protests — which his regime violently repressed.

The comments come as Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa remains under house arrest after being taken by force from the diocesan curia Aug. 19. The priests arrested with him in the pre-dawn raid are still being held in the notorious El Chipote prison, where the regime keeps its political prisoners.

An expansion of the free contraception scheme for women and funding to help people access IVF treatments have been announced as part of Budget 2023.

The expansion comes despite previous Government advice that free contraception would probably be ineffective and a waste of public funds.

Earlier this month, women aged 17-25 became eligible for free contraception, however the Government has confirmed the initiative will be extended from September 1st next year to include those aged 16-30.

The €107.1 million of additional funding allocated to the Department of Health as part of the cost-of-living package also includes measures which will help those undergoing IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) treatment.

Meanwhile, the Irish Times reports today on new research from the New York University Langone Fertility Center which found most women who tried to become pregnant after freezing their eggs did not succeed.

Dr Marcelle Cedars says the data is “sobering” and “should give women pause”, adding that many women “are overly optimistic” about their chances of having a baby when they freeze their eggs. Extracting eggs is extremely expensive as is thawing them, fertilizing them, and then trying to implant them successfully in a woman’s womb. The procedure is often not a success.

A church that was funded and largely built from within the Romanian community to serve more than 1,200 worshippers at any one time was officially opened in Dublin on Sunday morning.

The Betania Church in Tyrellstown Dublin 15 which serves Pentecostal Christians, has bucked the trend of recent times that has seen places of worship significantly scaled back and it now stands as one of the largest in Ireland.

It was funded by the community to the tune of around €8 million and almost entirely built by the Romanian faithful, often at weekends and late evenings.

While it opened its doors several months ago, its official ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on Sunday with local TD and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, the mayor of Fingal Howard Mahony, Romanian government officials and the Romanian ambassador in Ireland Laurenţiu-Mihai Ştefan in attendance.

“Our mission is to spread God’s love to all nations” said pastors Valerian Jurjea, Calin Onitiu and Avram Hadarau. “This was the motivating force behind the project.”

An international guide on transgender health that no longer includes minimum age thresholds for so-called “gender-affirming surgery” such as double mastectomies and operations on the genitals is being studied by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

However, the Department of Health told The Irish Times that any potential change in the Irish model of care depends on the outcome of discussions with the HSE about the new recommendations.

The updated edition of the Standards of Care of the US-based World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH) initially contained recommended age thresholds for surgical and pharmaceutical sex change treatments.

These included 14 years of age for the administration of cross-sex hormones, 15 years for “chest masculinisation” (mastectomies), and 17 for metoidioplasty (a type of ‘penis creation’), orchidectomy (the removal of the testicles), vaginoplasty (the construction of a ‘vagina’) and hysterectomy (the removal of the womb).

However, the updated WPATH edition published earlier this month was amended hours after it was posted online, with WPATH saying the age thresholds originally included were being removed as they had been published “in error”.

Large Budget spending on institutional daycare has left stay-at-home parents with almost nothing.

That’s according to the Director of the Iona Institute, David Quinn.

Yet, the great majority of parents of pre-school children neither use day-care nor wish to do so.

A recent Amarach Research poll commissioned by The Iona Institute shows that only one in five people want children under five placed in day-care during the working day. Almost half (45pc) think the ideal is that one parent stays at home with the child during the day, while 24pc say their preferred option is for the child to be looked after by another family member, such as a grandparent.

In addition, the Finance Minister also announced a small increase of €100 in the Home-Carers Credit.

David Quinn says this leaves single-income couples even further behind their double-income counterparts, exacerbating the effects of tax individualisation which caused such controversy when it was first introduced.

The Catholic Archbishops of Chicago and New York have issued a joint statement affirming that Catholic hospitals welcome patients who identify as transgender while also declining to perform sex-altering procedures.

It comes in reaction to a newly-proposed Government rule which would force Catholic health care facilities to offer gender-reassignment surgery.

In a statement published by America Magazine, Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Timothy Dolan of New York affirm their wholehearted support that all people, irrespective of age, sex, racial or ethnic background “without exception, receives the best health care that is their due” and this includes “people who identify as transgender”.

At the same time, the two Cardinals said that under the HHS-proposed rule “it would be considered discrimination for a health care facility or worker to object to performing gender transition procedures, regardless of whether that objection is a matter of sincerely held religious belief or clinical judgment”.

“Such a mandate threatens the conscience rights of all health care providers and workers who have discerned that participating in, or facilitating, gender transition procedures is contrary to their own beliefs”.