Free Legal Advice Centres (Flac) helplines have seen a “significant increase” in calls about marriage breakdown and divorce since Christmas with most coming from women.

Family law queries accounted for 35.5 per cent of all calls to Flac last week and have now overtaken employment law as the largest category.

Divorce and separation is “by far the biggest category” within family law, at 41 per cent, according to Erin Brogan, helpline manager. Non-marital family breakdown is also an issue.

“Over Christmas I would have expected more calls about breaches of access, or maintenance orders queries, but by far the main are relationship breakdown.

“There was a woman I was dealing with a lot before Christmas and her whole self-confidence was completely on the floor. She believed she was going to be kicked out the door because they weren’t married and she was in an awful state.”

Asked what was driving the increase in calls about relationship breakdown, she mentioned the ongoing Covid restrictions.

“Covid has amplified problems whether that’s addiction, financial issues, emotional issues. Then, releases like going out to work, going to visit parents for emotional support that would have helped with and masked those issues, they have been removed for many”.

Adopted people will be given the right to see their original birth certificate and learn the identity of their birth parents, even where they object, under new legislation approved by Cabinet on Wednesday. The legislation contains no provisions for assuring the same rights to donor-conceived persons.

The Birth Information and Tracing Bill will grant priority to the adopted person who is seeking to learn their birth identity, over privacy objections of birth-mothers, by granting them for the first time the absolute right to see their original birth certificate and early-life records.

This may also give the adopted person details of their father’s identity, though this was not recorded in some cases.

The new legislation will also establish a national tracing service to facilitate people who wish to establish contact with their birth relatives.

It will also set up a contact preference register for people to record their preferences for contact.

This legislation seeks to bypass the legal difficulties of the constitutional rights of privacy of birth mothers by grounding the adopted person’s right to access documents in the right a person has to their own personal data.

Chief Supt Melanie Jones told the Stormont Health Committee scrutinising proposed legislation that she would advise “careful consideration around the competing human rights at play”.

She said the right to respect private and family life would apply to clinic staff and those accessing abortions, while those protesting could argue rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as well as freedom of expression and assembly.

She also said she felt it would be naive to think enforcement of the legislation if passed would not be subject to legal challenge.

Chief Supt Jones suggested that most of the protest gatherings are “fairly compliant” and enforcement could fall to street wardens or other statutory resources.

Pope Francis has condemned “baseless” ideological misinformation about Covid vaccines, while backing national immunisation campaigns in his yearly address to the diplomatic corps.

“We have realised that in those places where an effective vaccination campaign has taken place, the risk of severe repercussions of the disease has decreased,” he said.

“It is therefore important to continue the effort to immunise the general population as much as possible”.

“Sadly, we are finding increasingly that we live in a world of strong ideological divides. Frequently people let themselves be influenced by the ideology of the moment, often bolstered by baseless information or poorly documented facts,” he said.

“Vaccines are not a magical means of healing, yet surely they represent, in addition to other treatments that need to be developed, the most reasonable solution for the prevention of the disease,” he told the diplomats gathered in the Vatican’s frescoed Hall of the Benedictions.

The pontiff, who is fully vaccinated, called for a global political commitment “to pursue the good of the general population through measures of prevention and immunisation”.

He renewed his appeal for the equitable distribution of vaccines to poor nations, saying that “monopolistic rules” regarding patents should be put aside for the greater good.

“Ireland is no longer a Catholic country. We are now a pluralist country with Catholic laws that we are gradually dismantling. The most important next step is removing the anachronistic control that the Catholic Church has over the education of our children,” it said.

“Even if they existed, having 400 multi-denominational schools [a Government target] would not solve the problem, as most parents would not be able to access these schools,” Atheist Ireland said. It also pointed out that “multi-denominational schools are still religious schools. They do not respect the freedom of conscience of atheist families.”

What was needed, it said, were “non-denominational schools, which treat everyone equally and do not promote either religion or atheism”. As “an immediate step” Irish schools “must allow children to leave the classroom during religion class”, it said.

The group has made a complaint to the Irish Comptroller and Auditor General about this “as schools that receive public funding are constitutionally obliged to do this”, it said. It has also complained to the Comptroller about what it describes as “the misuse of public funds regarding the teaching of religion in Irish schools”.

It has asked the UN to raise with the Irish Government the issue in schools of a “right to objective sex education, and section 37 of the Employment Equality Act, which allows publicly funded schools to discriminate against teachers on the ground of religion”.

There is no evidence that pro-life protesters have been harassing and intimidating women attempting to access abortion in Irish hospitals, according to an in-depth media investigation.

Despite years of claims, from politicians, media personalities, and NGOs, Gript reported that the available evidence suggests the claims are entirely untrue.

The media outlet contacted every hospital that provides maternity services in the country, asking if a) any staff or patients had ever made a formal complaint to the hospital about pro-life protesters, and b) if there had ever been an incident at the hospital in which “pro-life protesters have impeded the ability of patients to access the hospital, or attempted to intimidate or harass patients?”

They received responses from 16 of the 19 relevant hospitals – none had ever received a formal complaint from any member of their staff or from patients regarding the protests, and none detailed any incident in which protesters had attempted to intimidate or harass patients.

University Maternity Hospital (UMH) in Limerick, who did not respond to their queries, previously told BreakingNews.ie’s David Raleigh, in December of last year, that they had never received complaints regarding pro-life protests from patients, their families or staff. They did however say they had received “third-party correspondence on this matter.”

Pope Francis has warned against “cancel culture,” which he said has been “invading many circles and public institutions.” He was making his annual address to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps.

The pope slammed those who operate under the “guise of defending diversity” and in the process eliminate “all sense of identity,” which he said risks “silencing positions that defend a respectful and balanced understanding of various sensibilities.”

Diplomacy, he told representatives from the 183 countries accredited to the Holy See, is “called to be truly inclusive, not cancelling but cherishing the differences and sensibilities that have historically marked various peoples.”

The pope’s pointed remarks came during an address often referred to as his “State of the World,” wherein he made a strong plea for multilateral diplomacy at a time of significant global crises amid increased social fragmentation.

The Basilica of Saint-Denis in Paris, the final resting place of the kings of France, has been vandalised.

A man in his thirties entered the building with an iron bar with which he broke windows and three plaster statues in various chapels: those of St. Denis, St. Genevieve and St. Anthony. He also attacked several display cases in which religious objects were sold on the spot before being quickly arrested.

“The three damaged statues are a relatively recent plaster series, and without historic value,” said the rector of the basilica, Father Jean-Christophe Helbecque. “No words or gestures of threat were uttered and no injuries were reported.”

The vandal entered the basilica a first time but was refused access to a space behind the altar, at the level of the choir, forbidden to the public. He returned a little later with an iron bar.

Famous for housing the tombs of the kings of France, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, jewel of Gothic art, had previously been vandalised in March 2019. Stained glass windows as well as the organ were damaged in that attack.

The Missionaries of Charity have been cleared to receive and use foreign funding in India, after the religious order founded by Mother Teresa had unexpectedly been ruled ineligible to receive donations from abroad.

Minorities religion in India, including Christianity, are being subjected to growing restrictions and sometimes violent attack.

Vatican News reported on Saturday that the Indian government restored the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) license for the religious order, allowing the group to once again receive and utilise foreign funds.

India’s Ministry of Home Affairs had, on Christmas Day, ruled the Missionaries ineligible for foreign donations, without giving a full explanation of the reason.

The Missionaries had begun to ration their distribution of food and other items to the poor, leading to consternation and worry on the part of people in poverty being helped by the Missionaries.

The Government has been criticised for its “slow” progress in providing access to multi-denominational education.

A Department of Education report on enrolment for the 2021/22 school year states that multi-denominational schools are the fastest growing sector, with the number of such schools up 28 since 2018, while the number of Catholic schools is down by 26 over the same time-frame.

However, in total there are 164 multi-denominational schools compared with 2,750 Catholic primary schools.

The Irish Human Rights Commission’s (IHREC) said it has asked the United Nations to directly ask the State to account for its “slow progress on the divestment of patronage from Catholic schools”.

A spokesman for the Irish Episcopal Conference said Bishops “are supportive of an educational landscape which reflects the reality of the increasingly diverse society in our country”.

“A true plurality of patronage across the country should ensure parental choice whilst enabling patrons to be true to their own ethos and characteristic spirit.”

He added that any move to divest must involve a meaningful engagement at local level, supported by the Department of Education, with parents, teachers and the wider parish communities served by existing Catholic schools.