When hundreds of thousands of the young people of the world gathered here in Sydney ten years ago to celebrate the World Youth Day, they were encouraged to make their way to the Cathedral as pilgrims have always done. Here they were able to consecrate themselves to Our Lady after the example …

What to give the woman who has everything? We can imagine Pope Francis kneeling at his prie-dieu thinking just this: what present can I give Mary on the 160th anniversary of the Lourdes apparitions and, more importantly, the 50th anniversary of her Schœnstatt shrine in Australia?

In the 1987 humorous detective novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the eponymous detective, Dirk Gently, declares that ‘if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.

Jeremiah O’Flynn was a ‘character’. Born in County Kerry to a tenant farmer and his wife, he suffered from wanderlust and joined a Trappist mission to the West Indies. When the monks were expelled from Martinique he stayed on, though still only a deacon, tending the Catholic slaves until he was declared …

here’s an old story about a man caught in a flood who determinedly stayed in his house when all the surrounding ones were evacuated, insisting he would trust in God. As the waters rose, people in a car stopped to offer him a lift, but he told them ‘God will save me’. As the flood …

N’oublions jamais l’Australie – Let us never forget the Australians. The instruction is written above every blackboard in the Elementary School in the French town of Villers-Bretonneux. In a campaign using the slogan “By Diggers defended, by Victorians mended” children from the state of Victoria each donated at least one penny to rebuild the school …

The 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines is described on the DVD cover as “an adrenaline-pumping action ride”. It tells the true-ish story of a U.S. Naval Pilot, Chris Burnett (played by Owen Wilson). During a routine reconnaissance mission during the Bosnian Genocide of 1995 he obtained photographic evidence …

“Blind faith” is the name of an English blues band whose only album was also called Blind Faith (1969). There was also an album of that name by British rock band Walk on Fire (1989), and a third album of the same name by the Christian rock band Legend Seven (1993). Songs of that name were recorded …

Quinoa and kale, açai powder and green tea, a FitBit and a personal trainer – these are our culture’s secrets to living forever or till it feels like forever. There are even more ‘out there’ strategies: cosmetic, genetic or cybernetic treatments; getting yourself cloned or frozen till they have a cure; mind-to-computer …

Quinoa and kale, açai powder and green tea, a FitBit and a personal trainer – these are our culture’s secrets to living forever or till it feels like forever. There are even more ‘out there’ strategies: cosmetic, genetic or cybernetic treatments; getting yourself cloned or frozen till they have a cure; mind-to-computer uploading; and reincarnation into a younger body.