At least 64 people have been killed in a brutal attack on a Catholic parish in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

A violent onslaught by members of the Islamist rebel group Allied Democratic Forces struck the parish of Saint Joseph of Manguredjipa in the village of Ntoyo, North Kivu province, in the dead of night.

At least 64 people were slaughtered—many of them hacked to death—while others were shot or bludgeoned. The victims had gathered for a mourning ceremony, unsuspecting and vulnerable, when machetes, firearms, and hammers were unleashed. Some attackers then set homes ablaze. Local officials say the assault was clearly premeditated.

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has condemned the atrocity and expressed deep solidarity with the bereaved. The charity emphasises that such acts of violence are not isolated but part of a devastating pattern in eastern DRC, where Islamist militants aligned with IS-CAP (Islamic State’s Central Africa Province) operate with alarming impunity.

A new Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) curriculum for primary schools might undermine parental rights and introduce children to confusing and inappropriate concepts about gender at too young an age.

Psychotherapist Stella O’Malley has been outspoken in warning that the curriculum lacks both transparency and clarity. “The word gender is mentioned but it’s not defined,” she told the Irish Catholic, pointing out that the Department has used the phrase “sexual identity” instead of the more standard “sexual orientation.” According to O’Malley, such imprecise language risks either concealing an agenda or betraying a serious lack of understanding.

Parents, she believes, are being sidelined: “The consultation process has been little more than a tick-box exercise. Parents – not lobby groups – should be at the centre of any consultation about what children are taught.”

Adding his voice from the political sphere, Senator Rónán Mullen warned that while the Department of Education insists the curriculum is “inclusive, empowering, and deeply relevant,” in practice it risks being intrusive and manipulative. He cautioned that introducing complex ideas about sexuality and gender identity to children who may not be developmentally ready could cause harm.

The last remaining Christian town in Palestine is struggling for its survival amid increasing attacks by extremist Jewish settlers and onerous security checks by the Israeli authorities.

Fr David Khoury, the Greek orthodox parish priest of Taybeh said they are surrounded by about nine Muslim villages with whom they get on well. “We have no problem with them – only the settlers who are making trouble, mostly every day,” he told RTE’s Tony Connelly.

“With beer, 95% of the beer is water. And so when they attack these springs and they break the water pipes, the computer systems, the cameras, it limits the water that we get even more,” said his daughter and brew-master, Madees Khoury.

Settlers from a nearby hilltop village have been accused of stealing sheep, burning olive groves and attacking locals with the Israeli military randomly blocking access in and out of Taybeh.

Every aspect of the exporting process has become increasingly problematic, because everything has to be shipped through an Israeli port.

“It’s exporting, going through additional security checks for no reason, more delays getting the permits to pass through the commercial checkpoints to get to the port,” explained Madees Khoury.

Nadim believes the Israeli government is bent on annexing the West Bank and forcing out Palestinians, using settlers as a blunt instrument.

“I have a family tree of 600 years in Taybeh. I’m not going to leave my olive oil trees and my houses and my property. There is no way that I will go anywhere,” said Nadim.

Religious people self-identify as happier than non-religious people over and over again in the scientific literature, according to a leading expert on the sociology of religion.

Ryan Burge says there is no need for caveats, wiggle room or downplaying any findings. While it might be that happier people tend to be religious or that religious people tend to be happy “the upshot is still the same: religious nones are less happy than folks who identify with a faith tradition”.

As an example, he said the 2023–2024 Pew Religious Landscape Survey found those who never attend worship were the unhappiest cohort, while there is a steady increase in levels of happiness the more people do worship.

Data from the same survey found the conclusion holds true even when controlled for age and political ideology.

For example, among self-identified liberals born in the 1980s or 1990s who are non-religious and never attend a house of worship, 20% of them say that they are very happy.

For liberals born in the 1980s or 1990s who indicate that they are weekly church-attending Christians, 49% said that they were very happy.

The UK’s new Justice Secretary, David Lammy, fears that legalising ‘assisted dying’ will put pressure on some vulnerable elderly people to end their lives.

Mr Lammy was moved to the Ministry of Justice in a reshuffle earlier this month, meaning he would be partly responsible for implementing a law to enable terminally ill adults deemed to have six months or less to live to avail of assisted suicide or euthanasia. Critics oppose the bill in principle, and also say it does not contain the safeguards it claims for itself.

The former foreign secretary has previously expressed fears that his own mother would have opted for euthanasia if it had been available before she died of cancer.

Mr Lammy is expected to give evidence to a newly established Lords committee in the coming weeks, giving him an opportunity to share his personal concerns.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is also opposed to assisted suicide, meaning the two ministers who would have most responsibility for implementing the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, should it pass, do not agree with it.

The Catholic Church in Austria saw an increase in Mass attendance, a decline in formal disaffiliation and a rise in those ‘returning’.

The Church measures Mass attendance by conducting a headcount on two Sundays in the year.

This two-part count found there were 309,000 worshippers on the first Sunday and 366,000 on the second Sunday in 2022, 321,821 and 347,891 in 2023, and 366,210 and 378,797 in 2024, indicating a steady rise in attendance.

While the 2024 figures suggest Mass attendance is recovering after a sharp drop caused by the COVID-19 crisis, the numbers remain below pre-pandemic figures, when around half a million people attended Mass.

The new figures also confirmed an ongoing decline in the number of formal Church “exits,” where individuals formally disaffiliate from the Catholic Church.

Austria’s Catholic community is seeing an increase in the number of people being readmitted after formally disaffiliating or being received into the Church as converts, which are treated as a single category by statisticians.

The Canadian euthanasia regime has had a significantly worse impact on persons with disabilities than predicted in the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that decriminalised euthanasia, according to a new research report from the Cardus think tank.

The report concluded that “Canada’s legalisation of assisted suicide has led to an intensified risk of premature death for vulnerable groups, and that the expected safeguards have failed to materialise.”

Contrary to the Court’s expectations it found “at least 42 per cent of all MAiD deaths were of persons who required disability services, including over 1,017 persons who required but did not receive these services.”

The 2019-2023 period also saw 19,720 Canadians who required disability services and received them being killed via euthanasia. The annual figure grew 233 per cent from 2,223 in 2019 to 5,181 in 2023.

A spokesperson for the report said “it really is quite sad” to read that a growing number of Canadians who request disability services are proceeding with assisted suicide because they are not receiving that help. She said there are also concerns that thousands of Canadians with disabilities receiving help are still ultimately being euthanized.

A US talk show host casually suggested ‘involuntary lethal injection’ for violent homeless people with mental health problems who refuse Government assistence.

He apologised four days later, describing his comments as “extremely callous”.

The remark was made by one of the hosts on a daytime talk show as they discussed the violent stabbing of a young woman on a metro train by a repeat offender who authorities described as mentally ill and homeless.

One host said the average citizen “shouldn’t have to live in fear” of being attacked on buses, trains or on the streets, and added that “billions” had been spent on “mental health and the homeless population” but that many had refused that help.

He added that they should not be given a choice, either they take the resources on offer or be locked up in jail.

To which his cohost replied, “Or involuntary lethal injection or something. Just kill ’em.”

He quickly moved on to say voters needed politicians who would be “tough on crime” without any protest from the other two hosts.

Four days after his comments went viral he issued an apology.

Pope Leo XIV has described how he was physically attacked because he was a priest while on a visit to Ireland. He was twice here when he was the head of the Augustinian order worldwide, once in 2005 and again in 2007.

He recounted the incident at a conference in Peru in 2019, when he was a bishop there and a video of his comments has just resurfaced online.

In his comments, he says: “Never in my life, anywhere in the world, have I been physically attacked as I was in Ireland, just for this [pointing to his clerical collar], for just going out on the street.

“A man passes by, he looks at me [and says] ‘you’re a priest’ – and he starts attacking me. Fortunately, another Augustinian, who is twice as big as me, came to defend me.”

He added: “I don’t know if he was a victim or had lost faith in the church, I have no idea what happened to him. But I truly believe it is a very important factor in the experience here in the church as well.”

A recent Amarach opinion poll, commissioned by The Iona Institute, reveals that Irish people overestimate the number of Catholic clergy guilty of child abuse by around four to one, and in addition, a quarter of people would like if the Church disappeared from Ireland completely.

The poll also found that a third of people have a favourable view of priests, a third have an unfavourable view, with the rest in between.

The HSE has said that 12 babies were born alive, after abortions, in 2022 alone.

Of the 12 cases, one was under 22 weeks, nine were at 22-27 weeks and two were at 28-31 weeks.

In Ireland, premature babies born as early as the 23rd week of pregnancy have been known to survive with proper medical care.

However, in some jurisdictions, babies born alive after abortion are left to die, while in others, doctors are obliged to give life-saving treatment.

The HSE said it does not collate specific national data on the care of babies born alive after termination of pregnancy, but all infants delivered with a diagnosis of a life-limiting condition, including those delivered following abortion, are provided with “comfort care”.

In response to the figures, Pro Life Campaign spokesperson Eilís Mulroy said it was a deeply concerning humanitarian issue and that it raises questions about the standard of medical care the babies subsequently received.

Independent Ireland TD, Ken O’Flynn, said there needs to be a lot more openness surrounding the medical care given to or withheld from the babies in these situations.