Divorce applications hit record levels for the second year in succession in 2021, according to new data published by the Courts Service.

Some 5,856 divorce applications were filed last year, an 11pc increase on the previous record of 5,220 set in 2020.

While the vast majority of applications were made in the Circuit Court, 48 “big money” divorce cases, dealing with assets worth more than €3m, were filed in the High Court.

This figure is the highest since the Celtic Tiger years when a record 53 applications were made at High Court level in 2003. Back then the threshold for a High Court divorce case was just €1m.

The data is contained in the Court Service’s annual report for 2021.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly is to seek approval to introduce legislation on so-called “Safe Access Zones”.

The laws propose buffer zones of 100 metres around any healthcare facilities that can provide or administer abortion, and not just those that do so.

This will, in effect, see the introduction of exclusion zones around all hospitals, GP practices and Wellwoman or Irish family Planning Association services.

The laws would prohibit, within these zones, any activity that is “intended to, or may reasonably have the effect of, influencing the decision of a person in relation to availing of or providing services relating to termination of pregnancy”.

A graduated system of penalties is proposed, starting with a warning from gardaí.

Some offences would be prosecuted summarily and more serous offences could be indictable before a judge and jury, with penalties including a jail sentence.

It is hoped the legislation can begin the process of pre-legislative scrutiny in September and can be introduced before the end of the year.

Attorneys general from 17 US states are asking Google to provide assurances that the search giant isn’t suppressing results for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and replacing them with results for abortion clinics.

The letter, part of a campaign spearheaded by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, asks Google to resist a June 17 call from Democratic lawmakers to “limit the appearance of pro-life clinics” in search results. The legislators had written to Alphabet chief executive officer Sundar Pichai about “disturbing” reports of Google’s search results for “abortion” and “abortion pill” directing people to crisis pregnancy centers, which attempt to steer women away from abortions.

The Catholic bishops of Chile have warned that religious freedom will be at risk if a proposed draft of a new constitution is approved this fall.

The constitution’s text will be voted on Sept. 4 in a plebiscite in which all Chileans will participate.

The prelates criticized that, according to the Article 67 Section 4 of the proposed constitution, the exercise of the right to religious freedom must be done “in conformity with the law, respecting the rights, duties, and principles established by this Constitution.”

Consequently, people or institutions “could be forced to adopt practices or convey values that contradict their faith,” the bishops said.

The bishops said the new constitution proposes “the right to abortion, adopting a questionable orientation to sex education where parents participate in a very insufficient way, and promoting a radical theory of gender.”

The Bishops also lamented that the proposal doesn’t give conscientious objection a constitutional status.

A high-level ministerial meeting to advance legislation on international surrogacy has taken place. This comes despite commercial surrogacy being banned or not recognised anywhere in Europe, except Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

The Ministers for Health, for Justice and for Children, together with officials from their departments, examined the recently published report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on International Surrogacy.

They reiterated their broad welcome for the report and discussed how to advance its recommendations, including in legislation.

“The departments will finalise an agreed Policy Paper which can then form the basis for the development of legislative options, including consideration of whether some can be inserted into the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 at Committee Stage,” according to a press release.

“Key principles underpinning any new legislative measures will be the protection of the rights of all children born as a result of cross-border surrogacy arrangements and the safeguarding of the welfare of surrogate mothers”.

A circuit judge in Kentucky has blocked abortion restrictions from taking effect — in part because he said they adopt “a distinctly Christian and Catholic belief” about when life begins.

This is despite those same Churches maintaining that the beginning of life is a matter for science, not scripture.

The Kentucky laws would have banned abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, around the sixth week, and made exceptions for the life of the mother or disabling injuries.

“The laws at issue here adopt the view embraced by some, but not all, religious traditions, that life begins at the moment of conception,” Judge Mitch Perry of the Jefferson County Circuit Court wrote in an opinion issued Friday.

“The General Assembly is not permitted to single out and endorse the doctrine of a favored faith for preferred treatment. By taking this approach, the bans fail to account for the diverse religious views of many Kentuckians whose faith leads them to take very different views of when life begins,” he said.

“There is nothing in our laws or history that allows for such theocratic based policymaking,” he added.

The Catholic Education Partnership (CEP) has welcomed proposed changes to the Junior Cycle SPHE curriculum, which will see more of a focus on “human relationships” and less on “mere biology”.

The changes drew controversy after The Irish Independent reported that pornography would be taught in classrooms, but CEP CEO Alan Hynes said the reports were “misleading”.

“We’re quite happy that it can be harmonised with the ethos of any Catholic school”, he said.

It’s important that young people develop “a critical sense” in dealing with “the flood of pornography”, Mr Hynes warned, quoting from Pope Francis’ encyclical Amoris Laetitia.

He added that he was aware there are pro-pornography use campaigners out there, “but that’s not what’s being proposed here at all”.

The CEP, an umbrella group for Catholic primary, secondary and tertiary institutes, also welcomes the new focus on the relationship element of RSE, Mr Hynes said.

“It’s based on feedback from students themselves. I think a lot of the feedback came to a request to move away from a mere biological treatment and to more human relationship focus,” Mr Hynes said.

Plans are currently underway for the Church to develop its own RSE curriculum for second level education, to compliment the Flourish programme used in Catholic primary schools.

Free contraception will be available for women aged 17-25 from September. This comes despite a 2019 Working Group on Access to Contraception, under the then Health Minister, Simon Harris, say the proposal would probably be a waste of public funds.

The legislation providing for the free contraception scheme was signed into law last Thursday by President Michael D Higgins.

The measure is scheduled to come into operation by “early September”, the Government said.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said: “Free contraception is a cost-effective measure, reducing both crisis pregnancy and termination of pregnancy rates.

“Given that the costs of prescription contraception are typically faced by women, the scheme will impact positively on gender equity, reducing costs for women, but also benefitting their partners and families, starting with women aged 17-25.”

Religious freedom is under attack all over the world, according to experts gathered in Rome this week for a conference organized by the University of Notre Dame.

“Religious violence has risen to historic levels over the past decade affecting nearly all religious groups,” said Samah Norquist, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

“Believers of nearly all faiths — Christians, Muslims and Jews, Buddhists, Yazidis, Baha’i — have faced discrimination, harassment, repression, and, of course, persecution by state and non-state actors, as well as ideological movements,” Norquist said.

Nury Turkel, the chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, sounded the alarm on the deterioration of religious freedom in China, where the government continued to “vigorously implement its ‘Sinicization of religion’ policy” and demanded that religious groups and adherents support the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule and ideology.

Over one million Uyghurs have been placed into concentration camps for no other crime than the fact that they worship Allah rather than Xi Xinping. They have been victims of many abuses, including torture, rape, forced labor, and murder said Turkel, a Uyghur American attorney.

A listener to the Ronan Collins Show who complained that playing the Christmas hymn ‘O Holy Night’ was discrimination against non-Christians has had his complaint thrown out.

The male complainant told the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) that by playing the hymn on the RTÉ Radio 1 show on December 8, last year, the national broadcaster had stigmatised him and other non-Christians, inappropriately and unjustifiably, on the basis of religion.

He highlighted the lyrics “fall on your knees” which he said is disrespectful of human dignity and that to order someone to their knees amounts to an abuse of power.

He also stated that the lyric “and in his name all oppression shall cease” is inappropriate and unjustifiable, noting examples of historical oppression carried out in the name of Christianity.

The complainant accused the national broadcaster of actively condoning and sponsoring the lies, false promises, stigmatisation and abuse of power contained in the lyrics by repeatedly playing the hymn.

Rejecting the complaint, the BAI’s Executive Complaints Forum found “no basis” to believe that broadcasting the hymn “would cause harm” as it is characterised in the authority’s code of programming standards.