The data is contained in the CSO’s Population and Migration Estimates report for the year April 2020 to April 2021 which was published on Tuesday.

There were 55,500 births and 32,700 deaths in the year to April, giving a natural increase in the population of 22,800. But it’s the lowest level of natural increase recorded since the 2000 population estimates.

Nonetheless, a combination of positive net migration and natural increase gave population growth of 34,000 in the year to April 2021 to push the population to an estimated 5.01m, the first time it has risen over five million since 1851.

A “massive housing crisis” that is forcing so many to live in “unsuitable temporary accommodation” is contributing to family breakdown, the Archbishop of Dublin has warned.

Archbishop Dermot Farrell challenged the State to do more to provide affordable homes and said rules brought in following the banking crisis had backfired in terms of providing affordable homes.

“People are living in hubs waiting for homes. Some of the temporary accommodation is completely unsuitable for families. It is very difficult to sustain family life in those sorts of settings. It can contribute to family breakdown,” he said.

Dr Farrell said the State had an obligation to “provide homes for people that are affordable”.

“Family life is stressful at the best of times, but if everybody is confined to one room, where you live, sleep and cook, that creates a lot of extra stresses and strains,” he said.

“These are things that impact on family life and lead to family breakdown. It is a major crisis in this country which has to be addressed.”

America’s prestigious Harvard University, founded by Puritan settlers almost 400 years ago, has a new chief chaplain and he doesn’t believe in God.

Greg Epstein, 44, took up the role this week, becoming the first atheist elected president of Harvard’s organization of chaplains.

He has been the university’s humanist, or atheist, chaplain since 2005 and will lead a group of more than 40 chaplains who represent some twenty different religions and beliefs including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

In response, Princeton professor, Robert George, said he was not surprised that Harvard would have an atheist chaplain as it long ago seems to have shed any Christian, biblical, or theistic commitments. “The same is true for most of its peer institutions. I suppose that these days it is officially non-sectarian, but surely its policies, practices, and guiding understandings, principles, and norms reflect secular progressive ideas broadly speaking, and Woke ideology more specifically. An earlier generation of secular progressives would have denied that their ideology was a religion and, indeed, would have insisted—implausibly—that they had left religion behind. . . . Perhaps Harvard is now being clear-headed and honest in recognizing that secular progressive/Woke ideology is indeed a religion—for all intents and purposes the established religion of the University”.

The Government is expected to approve a plan to remove the vast majority of remaining Covid-19 restrictions over the autumn months, including restrictions on special sacramental occasions. In some parishes, they have already been taking place.

First Holy communion and Confirmation ceremonies can resume from 6 September under the plan being drawn up.

Religious ceremonies can proceed at 50 per cent venue capacity, regardless of immunity status of attendees.

All remaining restrictions on religious ceremonies are due to end on October 22nd, such as requirements for physical distancing; private indoor mask wearing; and limits on numbers attending indoor and outdoor events.

The measures being announced today will mark the most significant change to how the pandemic is managed since March of last year, shifting responsibility to people to use their own judgment and personal responsibility rather than the Government exhaustively regulating social interactions.

A Catholic priest, five Religious sisters from the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Theresa, and 14 disabled children from an orphanage were safely evacuated from Kabul last week.

Father Giovanni Scalese had spent eight years in Kabul, offering daily Mass for foreign residents in the city at the only Catholic church in Afghanistan, located inside the Italian embassy.

“I would never have returned to Italy without these children,” Father Scalese told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The children were residents of an orphanage founded in 2006 by the Missionaries of Charity, which has now been forced to close due to the Taliban’s takeover.

Sister Bhatti Shahnaz, another Catholic religious sister who arrived in Rome on the evacuation flight, also worked with disabled children in Afghanistan with her community, the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide.

“The 50 intellectually disabled children we looked after are still there,” she said with tears in her eyes.

Italy has welcomed 2,659 evacuated Afghans, about a third of them children, according to the Italian Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini.

Father Matteo Sanavio, the president of the NGO For the Children of Kabul, said: “We really must thank the Italian forces for their work and dedication, for everything … They managed to bring the nuns to safety, these little seeds of Christian charity present in Afghanistan, and above all, we must thank them for having brought our children, those of the Missionaries of Charity, who have severe disabilities.”

The long-time partner of a woman who died is suing the Minister for Social Protection to grant him the Widower’s Pension despite him not having been married.

The action has been taken by John O’Meara, whose partner of over twenty years Ms Michelle Batey died on January 31 last as a result of contacting Covid-19.

He claims that sections of the 2005 Social Welfare Consolidation Act which excludes him from receiving the pension, because he was not married to nor had entered into a formal civil partnership with his late partner, despite their long relationship together amounts to a discrimination.

The couple, who never married, have three children together, all of whom are minors. The court heard that Mr O’Meara had planned to marry Ms Batey but they couple were unable to go through with their plans.

The Italian State rescued a Christian Afghan family from Kabul last week.

They were brought out on an airlift organised by the Italian government to rescue Italian nationals and Afghans at risk.

A Catholic charity, the Fondazione Meet Human, accepted responsibility for the group of people once in Italy, which includes eight minors.

The Italian military helped solve the problem of getting them to the Kabul airport, an operation that was successful on Thursday of last week.

“We are grateful to Italian civilian and military authorities for this complicated and demanding rescue operation, not to mention the many people who worked for its success. It might be a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of drops,” President of the charity, Daniele Nembrini, told AsiaNews.

A large and varied group of human rights experts and advocates for religious freedom have urged U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to re-designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. The State Department is currently preparing a list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) for nations who have “engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom”. The list will be released in December.

“Now is not the time for the United States to pull back its pressure on a regime whose ham-fisted overreach is exacerbating its country’s human rights problems. The pressure must remain, not only because of religious freedom concerns, but because of all the human rights concerns facing Nigeria. Any let up by the U.S. and the international community will signal to the people of Nigeria that they have been abandoned. We cannot stand by while the Nigerian government allows terrorists and criminals to attack faith communities and commit gross human rights violations with impunity. Nigeria must remain a Country of Particular Concern,” said Kelsey Zorzi, Director of Global Religious Freedom for ADF International.

A majority of Irish prisoners abroad identified prayer and spirituality as “the most helpful” means of managing stress and anxiety.

That’s according to a survey conducted by the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas (ICPO), an agency of the Catholic bishops.

Of the 1,100 Irish prisoners surveyed in 30 countries, almost 70 per cent were in UK prisons with the remainder in jails in the US, Europe, and Australia.

The unprecedented survey was conducted in the final quarter of last year by the ICPO, which was set up by the Catholic bishops in 1985 to work with Irish prisoners overseas regardless of faith, conviction or prisoner status.

Commenting on the survey findings, Bishop Denis Brennan, chair of the ICPO said, “Our survey highlights the mental health difficulties experienced by Irish people who are in prison abroad.  While it is widely accepted that such problems are a reality for many in prison at home, in the case of a citizen in prison in a foreign country these are exacerbated by time; distance, especially from loved ones and family; finance; isolation; language, and a myriad of potential cultural barriers.”

Bishop Brennan continued, “I am concerned by the relatively high number of survey respondents indicating an absence of a clear sense of direction after their release from prison.  It seems that such uncertainty is a consequence of resettlement supports being withheld from foreign national prisoners in a number of countries and the inability for many to access educational, resettlement and offender behaviour courses during the pandemic”.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/one-in-four-irish-prisoners-abroad-experience-racism-survey-finds-1.4656861

https://www.catholicbishops.ie/2021/08/26/icpo-survey-60-of-irish-prisoners-abroad-experience-mental-health-difficulties/

A sexual consent education programme for students in second level was launched on Tuesday, which includes workshops for teenagers and seminars for parents.

The programme was developed by Active Consent researchers at NUI Galway over the last two years and is aimed at 15- to 17-year-olds. The programme does not say whether anything more than consent is morally necessary before a couple has sex.

It also includes seminars for parents and resources to increase ‘critical skills’ about topics such as body image, pornography and consent. One of the researchers is Kate Dawson who believes in ‘ethical’ pornography.

The programme aims to teach young people how to be knowledgeable and confident about consent, that consent should be “ongoing, mutual and freely given”.

It aims to help young people recognise the impact of gender, alcohol and drugs on sex and to teach the legal meaning of consent.

The programme will offer a 10-credit professional development module from September, as well as consent workshop training for teachers.