An abortion bill which passed its second stage in the Dáil on Wednesday evening, “goes miles beyond what people voted for”, according to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, who is himself strongly pro-choice.

The Bill removes virtually all restrictions on the procedure.

Government TDs were given a free vote. Although an opposition Bill, it passed by 67-64. There were eight abstentions.

Mr Donnelly told Newstalk Breakfast that he abstained because the Bill did not respect the will of the people expressed in the referendum of May 2018.

“I actually looked at the Bill in great detail. The Bill goes miles beyond what people voted for in repealing the Eighth. I made this point to Deputy Smith and to others who were supporting the Bill during the second stage debate.

“I campaigned very hard for Repeal, but the Bill does not respect that vote at all because it goes way beyond that vote.”

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar also sounded a note of caution. He campaigned for repealing the right to life, “but I also believe that when we called for a Yes vote at the time we gave people certain assurances. Those assurances were set out at the time.”

Mr Varadkar said: “This is a sensitive issue, it’s an issue of conscience. It’s about the rights of woman and also about the rights of children.”

The Cork South-West TD said despite the Census figures, nearly 90 per cent of the State’s primary schools remain Roman Catholic and asked would the Government conduct a review of the divestment programme “as a matter of urgency”.

“People shouldn’t be forced to go to school with an ethos which they don’t believe in because of a shortage of multi-denominational schools,” she said. “But this is happening because of a failure of the school divestment programme”.

The UK Government has introduced legislation to ensure that all school pupils in Northern Ireland will be told how and where they can obtain abortion and contraception.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said he was updating the requirements for relationship and sexuality education (RSE) in the curriculum.

The move has been criticised by DUP MP Carla Lockhart, who claimed that majority opinion in Northern Ireland remains opposed to abortion.

The regulations will make “age-appropriate, comprehensive and scientifically accurate education on sexual and reproductive health and rights, covering prevention of early pregnancy and access to abortion” a compulsory component of the curriculum for students.

The number of births recorded in Ireland in 2022 has plunged by 20pc compared with 2012, according to new CSO figures, despite a big rise in the population overall. The fertility rate is now just 1.7, whereas 2.1 children per woman is needed to replace the current population.

There were 57,540 births registered in 2022. In 2012, there were 72,225 births were registered.

The number of births over deaths has almost halved over the same period from over 43,000 to just under 23,000. This is leading to a fast-aging population.

A school district in the US state of Utah has removed the Bible from elementary and middle schools for containing “vulgarity and violence”.

The move follows a complaint from a parent that the King James Bible has material unsuitable for children.

Utah’s Republican government passed a law in 2022 banning “pornographic or indecent” books from schools.

Most of the books that have been banned so far pertain to topics such as transgenderism.

The Utah decision was made this week by the Davis School District north of Salt Lake City after a complaint filed in December 2022. Officials say they have already removed the seven or eight copies of the Bible they had on their shelves, noting that the text was never part of students’ curriculum.

The committee did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages contained “vulgarity or violence”.

Guidelines in Norway regarding so-called “gender -affirming care” for minors is to be revised because it is no longer considered to be evidence-based. The ‘care’ can involve puberty blockers, sex hormones and even operations to remove sexual organs.

The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board announced last week that it would be change the current guidelines.

The board also acknowledged that the growing number of teenage girls identifying as male, post-puberty, remains under-studied.

Under the proposed updated guidelines, the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery would be restricted to research contexts and no longer provided in clinical settings.

Norway joins Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom in introducing greater safeguarding for children. In the United States, eight states thus far have banned so-called ‘affirmative care’ for individuals under 18, with Tennessee being the latest to pass such legislation.

The Census 2022 results released this week show that Irish society is changing and diversifying, according to the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Farrell, though he cautioned that changes to the religion question in the census may have helped drive the result.

Archbishop Farrell said that preliminary census figures showed that the Irish population was “becoming more diverse.”

“Part of this reality is the reported change in the religious affiliation of the population, with those identifying as Roman Catholic in the 2022 Census representing 69% of respondents, compared to 79% of respondents in 2016,” he commented to the Pillar.

“However, the CSO has rightly pointed out that the structure of the question has changed radically between the two census forms. As a result, direct comparisons are problematic.”

The 2016 census form asked “What is your religion?” and listed “Roman Catholic” as the first option and “No religion” as the last.

The 2022 form asked “What is your religion, if any?” and put “No religion” as the first option, followed by “Roman Catholic.”

A preliminary Dáil vote in favour of a radical expansion of Ireland’s already permissive abortion regime has been met with dismay by pro-life representatives.

The bill by People Before Profit TD, Bríd Smith, would, if passed into law, permit abortion on request up to birth among other things. Tuesday night’s vote in favour of it moving to committee stage passed by 67 votes to 64 with 8 abstentions.

Commenting on the result, Eilis Mulroy of the Pro Life Campaign said when members of the public realise what is in the bill, “they will be disgusted”.

“It is a bill that shows zero respect for the rights of unborn babies. Many of those who voted in favour of this evening’s bill voted against a bill in the Dáil less than two years ago that would have allowed humanitarian pain relief to be given to unborn babies prior to late term abortions. There really are no words to describe how cold and uncaring some members of the Dáil have become when it concerns the issue of protecting defenceless and innocent unborn babies. When the people voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment in the 2018 referendum, they certainly didn’t vote for abortion on request throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy.”

A 121-year-old church in Northern Alberta, Canada, was gutted by a fire set by arsonists last week.

A second church in Alberta, St Mary’s Cathedral, was also the victim of alleged attempted arson three days earlier, as local police seek assistance in identifying a man who allegedly set a fire and assaulted two staff members.

Referring to the historic St Bernard Catholic Church, Local Archbishop Gérard Pettipas, said it was “irreparably destroyed”.

“It was not only a monument to the past but [also] a vital part of the present and a building our diocese has been trying to restore, little by little, to its original beauty,” he said.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police have charged two men with break and enter to commit theft as well as arson.

Just three days before, on May 19, police responded to reports of a “deliberately set fire” at St Mary’s Cathedral in Calgary, in the western province of Alberta.

Law enforcement was called and the Calgary Fire Department put out the fire when it arrived.

More than 50 Catholic churches in Canada have been vandalised or burned down since the announcement in 2021 that graves had apparently been found near a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.