He was destined to be a brilliant chemist and in 2006 to discover the elusive process for clean coal technology: electricity with no carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

In the Middle Ages one of most popular devotional items, found in the best Christian homes, was a carved head of St John the Baptist on a plate!

It is the most confronting image amongst the enormous cast of characters in the Sistine Chapel.

We live in the age of “I” and “my”. Devices are called ‘iPhone’, ‘iPod’ and ‘iPad’. ‘MyTrains’ or ‘MyBuses’ take us to ‘MyZones’ or the web takes us to ‘MySchool’ and ‘My eBay’. Ever since ‘the Me generation’ we’ve been bombarded by such self-centred language.

In the fourth instalment in the Die Hard series, released in 2007, John McClane, the old detective played by Bruce Willis, asks the following question: “You know what you get for being a hero? Nothin’. You get shot at.

In the early hours of yesterday morning-last night for us-85-year-old priest, Fr Jacques Hamel prepared to say Mass. What he didn’t know was that this would be the last Mass he would ever say: just as he was finishing Mass, two terrorists claiming allegiance to Daesh or ISIS stormed the church, taking Fr Hamel and four others hostage.

We’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) many times before; though we all love it, it’s so familiar we easily switch off when it starts to be read.

The 18th-century founder of the Redemptorists and Doctor of the Church, St Alphonsus, is a patron saint of vocations, confessors, moral theologians and the lay apostolate.