The Irish College of General Practitioners received sustained criticism yesterday for not consulting their own members before advocating the abolition of the 3-day abortion waiting period.
90pc of GPs currently do not participate in the administration of chemical abortions.
Representatives of the College addressed a Joint Oireachtas Committee that is considering a Sinn Fein bill to remove the mandatory 3-day ‘cooling off’ period.
Colm Burke, TD FG, Padraig O’Sullivan, TD FF, and Peadar Toibin, TD Aontu, voiced their surprise that the body purporting to speak for GPs had not consulted GPs.
The representatives of the College also received criticism for not having gathered evidence from women who availed of the 3-day wait to change their mind about aborting their unborn child.
According to HSE figures, over a five-year period, 10,534 women did not return to proceed with an abortion after the three-day period had elapsed.
Senator Sarah O’Reilly spoke of her own experience of trauma, confusion and panic when she had a crisis pregnancy as a 16 year old . She described the 3-day wait as a reflective period that “supports” women, and its abolition would create a “barrier” for women.
The listing recognises both Catholic and non-Catholics who died for the faith.
Many of those may also satisfy the conditions for being canonised as saints such as a high standard of ordinary Christian life.
Historian Andrea Riccardi, vice-president of the Commission, said that the 21st century is a new era marked by the shedding of blood for the faith.
“To the question of whether we are facing a new time of martyrdom, we must answer yes. A new century of martyrdom, strongly intuited by Pope Francis. The time of martyrdom continues,” he said.
The continent of Africa as a whole has seen many Christians killed, with Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, and many other countries, all seeing high levels of bloodshed.
An international coalition has asked the United Nations to officially recognise surrogacy as “a new form of slavery involving women and children.”
The Casablanca group of experts and the French NGO Juristes Pour l’Enfance made the request on the centennial of the 1926 Slavery Convention for consideration at an upcoming Human Rights Council session dedicated to the occasion.
The brief argues that surrogacy reduces the child in utero to an object of disposal, which corresponds to the definition of slavery set forth in the 1926 document, namely, the exercise of the attributes of the right of ownership.
As for the woman carrying the baby, her body is subjected to the will of third parties, which includes control over her diet and medical care as well as, potentially, embryo reduction or abortion, the statement explains.
Several United Nations bodies have already characterized surrogacy as the sale of children and in July 2025, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls called for the eradication of all forms of surrogacy and the adoption of a binding international instrument to abolish this practice.
New poll findings show strong public backing for the retention of the three-day reflection period before an abortion.
Of those who expressed an opinion in the Amárach Research poll, 55.3% voiced support for retention of the three-day wait, while 44.7% favoured its removal.
The results come as a Sinn Féin bill to abolish the waiting period passed a preliminary vote in the Dáil, 86 to 70, shortly before the summer recess.
Commenting on the findings, Pro Life Campaign spokesperson Eilís Mulroy said public support for retaining the three-day reflection period has been evident for months and, if anything, appears to be strengthening.
“Replies to parliamentary questions show that, over a five-year period, 10,534 women did not return to proceed with an abortion after the three-day period had elapsed. That’s an incredible figure and one that, in our view, proves the life-saving impact of the waiting period. We hear from women all the time about how important the reflection period was to them in providing that extra space to think through such a profound and life-altering decision”.
A House of Commons vote on legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide will take place one day after the marking of World Suicide Prevention Day.
The close juxtaposition of the two has been labelled “ironic” by commentators.
Yet, tomorrow, MPs will vote on a bill to enable terminally ill adults, deemed to have six months or less to live, to avail of assisted suicide or euthanasia.
The country’s Catholic Bishops have described the bill as an indefensible attack on human life and fails even to provide adequate safeguards to the most vulnerable.
The EU’s data protection laws may require a church to delete a baptismal record, say the bloc’s Catholic Bishops, and are appealing against such a requirement on religious freedom grounds. EU data protection rules have often been criticised for being too far-reaching.
The Bishops’ agency in Brussels, COMECE, just published a position paper on the subject and submitted it to the EU’s Court of Justice (ECJ).
This is in response to a case in Belgium where an individual informed a parish that he was renouncing his membership of the Church and asked that all records be deleted, including the record of his baptism.
The parish agreed to amend the baptismal register, to note his formal departure, but not scrub the original record.
A civil court, however, ordered that the record be deleted and the Church has appealed the case to the EU level to clarify the GDPR directive.
In the paper, the Bishops say the register is not a list of members, but rather a record of a historical event, sealing an indelible mark of faith on the person.
“Requiring the Catholic Church to erase the data contained in it, thereby intervening directly in its organisation, would constitute a serious infringement upon Church autonomy and institutional freedom of religion.”
In one, suspicion falls on jihadist militants, whereas in another the perpetrators are believed to be armed gangs of ethnic Fulani herdsmen.
“The recent barbaric abduction of over 60 worshippers from a Mosque in Borgu, Niger State, and the horrific massacre of 47 innocent citizens, with 17 others critically wounded, in Ukum, Benue State, represent a worsened breakdown of security. Whether in a mosque, a church, a marketplace, or the quiet of their homes, Nigerians are still being slaughtered, traumatised, and displaced with impunity”, the bishops wrote in their statement to ACN. ACN is a Catholic charity that assists persecuted Christians worldwide.
Although the violence in Nigeria is often spoken of in terms of clashes between Muslims and Christians, in the case of Borgu both attackers and victims were Muslim. In their statement, the bishops made a point of expressing solidarity with all the victims.
Pope Leo XIV has received rock star welcomes from large crowds of young people worldwide since his election in May 2025.
Vast numbers streamed through Rome last September, to witness the historic canonization of the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, 15-year-old Carlo Acutis.
The event was symbolic of a church transitioning into a digital era and providing new role models for the young.
And Pope Leo is at the helm of it all.
“At 70, Pope Leo is obviously not himself a young man,” says Ruth Gledhill of The Tablet.
“Yet he has an air of youthful vigour around him, he is sporty and fit. He also seems genuinely bereft of any ego.”
Earlier this month, tickets to see the US-born Pope in the 80,000-seat Stade de France near Paris in September were snapped up in less than an hour.
Among them was 21-year-old Allan, who had 10 members of his family on hand trying to secure a ticket online. It was much the same approach many music fans take when trying to get into hugely popular music festivals.
“[It was] like it was Beyonce,” he told Le Parisien of the challenge to secure a spot for the event.
The human race has likely fallen below replacement fertility for the first time in recorded history, according to a new paper in the Annual Review of Economics.
This is a far cry from stark warnings from the 1970s onwards that the world was facing a devastating overpopulation crisis. Those warnings caused a paradigm shift in cultural and political attitudes away from child-bearing and prompted states and transnational organisations to adopt a host of anti-natal policies.
Now however, economists Jesús Fernández-Villaverde and Patrick Norrick say there is an “astonishing” demographic shift: “As of 2026, humanity is likely to be below replacement level: we are having fewer births than we need to keep population constant in the long run,” the authors wrote.
They add that while global populations will continue to grow for another three decades due to momentum, a rapid and accelerating decline in worldwide births is firmly underway.
“As far as we can tell, this has never happened before in our history as a species, not even during wars or pandemics.”
There is an “urgent need” to address Ireland’s population issues, according to the Irish Examiner.
In an editorial in Monday’s paper, the leader writer noted the new CSO population figures reveal that we, “are ageing faster than most of our European neighbours, largely as a result of a falling birth rate”.
It adds that, worryingly, during the 12 months to the end of April, the number of people aged under 14 fell to under 1m (992,400) for the first time since 2014. And since 2010, the number of births has dropped by some 27pc.
The editorial said the problem is not one for the future, but for now; and, while an aging populace has been well flagged, “fertility rates have fallen much more quickly than was ever anticipated”.
It suggests the Government might look at the example of Singapore, “where they recently incentivised having children to the tune of €47,000 per newborn”.
Although it also noted that cash alone will not solve the problem; “more family-friendly policies will also have to be adopted”.
It concluded that the CSO figures make clear that the Government has “urgent problems to tackle”, though it also laments that no one in Cabinet seems likely to act.
