The scale of the persecution of Catholics under the regime of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua has been laid bare by a new report chronicling 529 attacks in the last five years alone.

Jesuit Fr Kevin O’Higgins, who spent decades working in Latin America, told The Irish Catholic the report is “vital” in highlighting the crisis and urged Irish Catholics to keep the situation in the public eye. He also said the report could aid future prosecutions of the perpetrators.

Mr Ortega’s dictatorship is accused of 90 attacks this year alone in its crackdown on the Church – more than in any previous year since 2018.

Fr O’Higgins insisted that “it is vital that the names and faces of victims of the persecution should be known”.

Parents of children diagnosed with terminal conditions feel like the first thing that’s being offered to them is abortion, according to a spokesperson for Every Life Counts, which supports parents whose children have an ultimately fatal condition.

Vicky Wall of Every Life Counts said this can deprive parents of the opportunity to know and love their child, even for a short time after birth.

Regarding the recently published review of Ireland’s abortion law, she referred to babies who were aborted after being incorrectly diagnosed with a serious disability.

“It was horrifying to see that again there was no mention of the baby that was misdiagnosed, and before the review came out, we heard that there were two other people, plus baby Christopher’s parents, which makes three now in total, that had a case against the HSE for abortion after misdiagnosis, which is absolutely horrific,” Ms Wall said.

“There was no mention of that, no mention of safeguards.”

Criticising the review as “incredibly one-sided,” Ms Wall said that to her, the abortion review was “absolutely about increasing abortion numbers – how can we get more abortion?”

The Government’s hate crime bill has the potential to cause “immense damage” to free speech and democracy in Ireland, according to the former Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland.

Baroness Nuala O’Loan, a member of the House of Lords, has said the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 will create great uncertainty about what constitutes a crime.

Writing in The Irish Catholic this week, Baroness O’Loan said: “For example, it appears that this bill will make it a crime to assert opinions which are likely to result in ‘hatred’ towards people who are biologically male, but who want access to women’s changing rooms and sports because they feel that whilst born male, they are in fact female.

“The maximum penalty for this offence is five years in jail. This bill may be well intentioned, it has a wider application, but it contains some very questionable provisions. It is described as a bill to protect, but it has the capacity to do immense damage to free speech and democracy Ireland,” she said.

The legalisation of euthanasia puts pressure on the elderly and people with disabilities to “simply dispose of themselves”, according to Aontú.

Regarding end of life care, it says: “Euthanasia is not the answer to investment failures in palliative care. Euthanasia is not the answer to the limitations on our capacity to treat and heal. Assisted suicide recommits elements of our healthcare service to ending life – not preserving and prolonging life.”

On abortion the party reiterated its pro-life stance and said that parents need economic supports to raise their children. The party said it opposes abortion because it “ends the lives of human beings. Abortion targets the poorest, those with disabilities and females in particular. You are far more likely to be aborted if you are female, have a disability or are from a poor socio-economic background”.

ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith will introduce laws to acquire Calvary Public Hospital, operated by the Little Company of Mary, into the ACT Legislative Assembly, and will rapidly take control and ownership, with a transition team delivering the facility over to Canberra Health Services from 3 July.

The hospital will be acquired on “just terms” and its 1800 staff will be retained, but it will ultimately be demolished and replaced by a new $1 billion hospital on the existing site.

The Archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn, Christopher Prowse, said he was “totally stunned and shocked” by the decision, “which came without warning or discussion.”

“We are utterly astounded. There has been no formal contact with the Archdiocese, nor has any reason been given,” Archbishop Prowse said.

“The lack of transparency of the ACT Government raises several questions and concerns. It is a very sad day when governments can simply decide to mount a take-over of any enterprise they like without any justification.

“This is certainly a worrying precedent.”

It would be wrong to deny assisted suicide to people whose request is driven mostly by poverty or other ‘unjust’ conditions, according to a new paper by two University of Toronto bioethicists.

Not allowing ‘medical assistance in dying’ (MAID) to people when bad circumstances show no short-term chance of improving would only cause further harm to them, Kayla Wiebe, a PhD candidate in philosophy, and bioethicist Amy Mullin, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, write in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

“To force people who are already in unjust social circumstances to have to wait until those social circumstances improve, or for the possibility of public charity that sometimes but unreliably occurs when particularly distressing cases become public, is unacceptable,” they wrote.

Couples who lived together before marriage were 48% more likely to divorce than couples who moved in together after being engaged or married, according to a new study.

About 70% of marriages start with cohabitation, and around 50% to 65% of the country believes living together before marriage will actually improve the likelihood of staying together.

“Although many believe that living together before marriage will lower their odds of divorce, there is no evidence that this is generally true and a lot of evidence that it is not true,” an Institute for Family Studies report states.

The IFS study, by University of Denver psychology researcher professors Dr. Scott Stanley and Dr. Galena Rhoades, reviewed the 2022 status of first-time marriages that began from 2010 to 2019 and showed cohabitating couples more likely to have their marriages end than those who did not.

A same-sex couple’s son born in the UK under a surrogacy arrangement does not derive Irish citizenship from his non-biological father, the Supreme Court has found.

In a ruling that overturns a High Court decision, the court held that the non-biological father, who secured a post-birth parental order in an English family court, is not classified as the boy’s “parent” under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1956.

In a judgment on behalf of the five-judge court, Mr Justice Brian Murray held that the term “parent” in the 1956 Act refers to the boy’s genetic father and the surrogate birth mother.

The boy’s UK birth certificate initially recorded the birth mother, who was not engaged in a commercial capacity, and his biological father, who is British.

The first UK baby created with DNA from three people has been born after doctors performed an experimental IVF procedure that aims to prevent children from inheriting incurable diseases.

The technique, known as mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT), uses tissue from the eggs of healthy female donors to create IVF embryos that are free from harmful mutations their mothers carry and are likely to pass on to their children.

Because the embryos combine sperm and egg from the biological parents with tiny battery-like structures called mitochondria from the donor’s egg, the resulting baby has DNA from the mother and father as usual, plus a small amount of genetic material – about 37 genes – from the donor.

While the process has led to the phrase “three-parent babies”, more than 99.8% of the DNA in the babies comes from the mother and father, not the donor.

The Guardian further reported that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) confirmed “less than five” babies have been born in the UK so far after such treatment.

Amid the escalating violence currently wracking Sudan, priests and religious in violent hotspots have continued to keep church doors open and minister to people.

“I want to stay until the last minute, I do not want to leave the people here alone,” one missionary priest told Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). “A lot of our Catholics came [to the church]. You know, here, the Church is their hope. But we face the same problems as the rest of the people.”

At least 600 people have been killed since the conflict began on April 15, when fighting broke out between military units loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support (RSF) headed by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. According to the UN, the number of displaced people inside Sudan has more than doubled this past week, now reaching more than 700,000.

ACN was told that a church in Bahri, northern Khartoum, was hit by a bomb, “but those on site managed to put out the fire after it took hold of the roof. Armed fighters also forced their way into the cathedral in Khartoum, and a chapel belonging to a religious congregation was bombed.”

One project partner told ACN: “Will the conflict end soon? It is our prayer. But neither side is ready. Internationally, people push for dialogue, but there is still shooting.”