The Religious Sisters of Charity are fearful and bewildered for having been so badly portrayed in the public eye since deciding to transfer ownership of St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, paving the way for the new National Maternity Hospital to be built on the same campus.

“You would think we were evil,” a source close to the Sisters told The Irish Catholic this week. “We’ve been treated like monsters. In no way do they want the Church involved in any way [in the running of healthcare].

“Yet many, many people experienced the care and the work the Sisters had done. . . . Yes, there were some exceptions but for the most part the good that was done was amazing,” the source said.

The Religious Sisters of Charity began caring for cholera victims in Ireland in 1832 and in 1834 set up St Vincent’s Hospital and since then have been “dedicated to providing the best possible healthcare in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and in the homes of the sick.

“The nuns are also known for their work among prisoners and the homeless as well as in education, counselling and immigrants.

“It is distressing that people would think so badly of us. I’m more concerned for the people who are saying these things than for us,” continued the source.

“The sisters are absolutely terrified of the media and the way they have been portrayed. The notion that a young person listening to this, what idea of Christianity do they go away with?” she said.

Ireland cannot be silent on the “contempt” shown by Chinese authorities in arresting Cardinal Joseph Zen for his support of democracy in Hong Kong, said Senator Gerard Craughwell.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic, the independent senator asked “how many tonnes of beef is the human rights abuse in Hong Kong worth to keep us silent?”

The 90-year-old Cardinal Zen was detained by national security police earlier this month, charged with violating the territory’s draconian security law, before being released on bail. The charges relate to the work of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, a charity that helps political arrestees in Hong Kong defray their legal expenses.

Senator Craughwell said the arrest speaks volumes about the “Chinese Junta”, that they “have the neck to go that far up the community food chain to arrest a senior member of the Catholic Church.

He added that Ireland “should be making the strongest statements as publicly as possible at the UN security council.

Attempts to raise issues relating to China’s actions in Hong Kong in the Seanad “are closed down as much as possible”, Senator Craughwell said.

“We daren’t say a word that might lead to a reduction in the amount of beef we export,” he continued.

JK Rowling has condemned as “utterly shameful” the treatment of a teenage girl who felt forced to leave her school after pupils hounded her for challenging the views of a visiting speaker.

The author waded into the row after a teacher at the school claimed the unnamed girl was treated like a heretic for questioning a politician’s assertions about sex.

After debating with the speaker, a female member of the House of Lords, the sixth form student at the private girl’s school said she was surrounded by up to 60 pupils who shouted, screamed and spat at her. She escaped and said she collapsed, unable to breathe properly.

Teachers were initially supportive but withdrew their backing after the other sixth-formers accused the girl of ‘transphobia’, and the school ended up apologising for not maintaining a “safe space” in the sixth form.

The teenager returned to school a few times but was told she would have to work in the library if she said anything provocative in lessons, and faced bullying and accusations of transphobia from pupils throughout the school. She also spent break and lunch times in the library. The girl left in December and is studying at home.

A Christian student was beaten and burnt to death Thursday by fellow students in northwestern Nigeria after she was accused of making a ‘blasphemous’ social media post, witnesses and police said.

Deborah Yakubu Samuel, member of the Evangelical Church Winning All, was stoned and then burned to death when she returned to classes after a holiday. A group of students attacked her due to allegedly blasphemous messages she is accused of having sent as part of a students’ WhatsApp group.

“Students forcefully removed the victim from the security room where she was hidden by the school authorities, killed her and burnt the building,” said Sokoto police spokesperson Sanusi Abubakar.

A video of the incident posted on social media and verified by The Associated Press showed Samuel lying on the ground as she was stoned and beaten with planks. The young men surrounding her then dumped tires on her, and set them ablaze.

Abubakar said two students have been arrested in connection with the incident while an investigation directed by Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwal is underway.

“The suspects in the viral video on Twitter were spotted and will be (identified) soon,” he said.

Thousands of people took part in a pro-life demonstration in the Croatian capital of Zagreb at the weekend, amidst controversy as pro-abortion groups in Croatia want to force doctors to perform abortions against their personal beliefs.

During what was deemed the ‘March for Life’, signs with slogans such as “Unborn children, Croatia’s most endangered minority” and “Unborn lives count too” could be seen among the protesters.

In Croatia, several groups want to limit abortion, which is allowed up to the tenth week of pregnancy. After that period, an abortion can be performed if the health of the woman or the unborn child is in grave danger, or in the case of rape or incest.

However, pro-abortion groups are putting increasing pressure on doctors, many of whom refuse to perform abortions on the grounds of conscientious objection.

One doctor at Saturday’s “Walk For Life” rally in the capital Zagreb said he refused to perform abortions as a matter of conscience.

Surveys suggest that more than half of Croatia’s gynaecologists have a similar stance.

An explosive claim that the dates and times of abortion appointments at a Limerick hospital were leaked to pro-life activists so that protests could be timed to harass women, has been falsified by evidence from a freedom of information request, according to Gript media.

The released documents list every date on which an abortion was carried out in University Maternity Hospital Limerick [UMHL]. These were compared with a regularly scheduled prayer vigil consisting of a small number of women walking on the public streets outside UMHL in quiet prayer.

Rather than being held only on days in which abortions were carried out, there were only two instances between June of 2021 and April of 2022 in which the prayer vigil coincidentally occurred on the same day as an abortion.

Commenting on the investigation, Gary Kavanagh of Gript said :“So we have a group who have been meeting on the same day since September of last year, who have held multiple vigils which did not coincide with abortions, and who then had two of their vigils coincide with abortions due to the actions of UMHL, and this was presented as the group being leaked private medical information by sources within the hospital, an immensely serious charge which led to negative attention both for the prayer vigil and the hospital. And we now know that it all seems to have been entirely accidental and that the claims of the deliberate leaking of medical information to a pro-life group are baseless”.

Revealed: The abortion falsehood repeated again and again in the Dail

The relocation of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) from Holles St in Dublin to St Vincent’s has been approved by Cabinet.

A memo was added to the agreement that the term ‘clinically appropriate’ allows the new hospital to provide all legally permissible procedures in the areas of maternity, including abortion and ‘gender recognition’ surgery.

Meanwhile, the presence of Christian symbols in St Vincent’s private hospital has been attacked.

The Pro-life Campaign has expressed alarm over calls for doctors conscientiously objecting to abortion to be monitored by the State.

The calls have come from the state-funded National Women’s Council (NWCI).

The PLC has said said the NWCI “are pressing hard for the Government to start ‘monitoring’ pro-life doctors to make sure they’re helping facilitate abortions”.

Calling the move “a truly terrifying development”, the PLC said the pro-choice lobby group had “raised the issue in media interviews and at a recent meeting of the Oireachtas Health Committee”.

In an op-ed in the Irish Examiner, Orla O’Connor, Director of the National Women’s Council, wrote that “with just one 1 in 10 GPs providing abortions and only half of maternity hospitals providing the service in line with the law, access continues to be a major issue”.

She continued: “We urgently need better data collection and careful monitoring of conscience-based refusal of abortion, as well as Safe Access Zones to ensure all those providing and receiving care can do so in dignity, without fear of harassment or abuse”.

The vital contribution that families make to building strong communities was remembered on Sunday’s International Day of Families.

The Federation of Catholic Family Associations said the day was “a special occasion to say thank you to our families, to all its members”.

FAFCE President, Vincenzo Bassi added: “It is a precious moment to highlight the hidden and priceless work of many fathers and mothers and the contribution of our families and family networks to the social cohesion of our communities. Public policies should recognise that”.

He said it is crucial to recall in these terrible times of war in our continent that “to work for the family is to work for peace and reiterates its commitment to be a tool of peace”.

Looking ahead to the thirtieth anniversary of the International Year of the Family, 2024 (IYF+30), he said the focus on selected megatrends, including technological change, migration, urbanisation, demographic and climate change, “aims to facilitate the analysis of their impacts on family life and to recommend responsive family-oriented policies in order to harness the positive aspects of those trends and counteract their negative facets”.

One of Asia’s top Catholic cardinals said the arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen highlights “the situation for human rights and threats to religious freedom in Hong Kong.”

Myanmar Cardinal Charles Bo issued after the Hong Kong authorities arrested Zen and accused him of violating the territory’s draconian security law, which was imposed on the former British colony by Beijing in 2020, after a series of pro-democracy protests in the territory. The cardinal has participated in a fund that is raising money for the defense of those accused under the security law.

Zen was released on bail the same day as his arrest after hours of questioning by police.

“Hong Kong used to be one of Asia’s freest and most open cities. Today, it has been transformed into a police state,” the Myanmar cardinal said.

“Freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and association, and academic freedom have all been dismantled. There are early signs that freedom of religion or belief, a human right set out in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Hong Kong is a party, is threatened,” Bo continued.

The cardinal’s statement is one of the strongest to appear after Zen’s arrest, with the official Vatican statement only noting “concern” over the arrest, and that the Holy See was “following the development of the situation very closely.”