Ireland/Northern Ireland

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — In May 2024, Billy Scampton from Londonderry and Shannon Ritchie-Leet from Ontario, Canada, walked to the edge of River Strule in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Together, they scattered the ashes of their mother into the water and watched as the river carried them away. The two siblings may have been sharing an…

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — Jesus, understandably, is the star of most Passion Plays. The story of Christ’s Passion, derived from the Latin word “passio,” meaning “suffer” — recounts the final days leading to Jesus’s crucifixion and death, based on accounts in the four Gospels of the Christian Bible. In the Northern Ireland town of Londonderry,…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – The St. Patrick’s Day Parade here this year featured the expected shamrocks, green hats, traditional Irish dancers and a man dressed as a leprechaun. However, participants also included members of communities not commonly associated with the ultra-Christian, Anglo-Saxon stereotype of Northern Ireland. One of these groups floated down the street in…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — One Friday morning two years ago, Harvey Mills took a train to Belfast from his quiet hometown of Ballymena. While he told his parents he was off to meet some friends, in reality, he was on his way to speak with a shaykh at the Belfast Islamic Centre. This was the…

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — On a late Sunday afternoon in January 1972, 27-year-old William McKinney slung a new movie camera over his shoulder and draped a rain jacket over his arm as he walked out of his home. He was on the way to document a Catholic civil rights march just a few streets down…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — When Brexit first went into effect in 2020, Makkah Market’s Ramadan order came late. The owner, Mohammed Abdelnoor, has since learned that he needs to order products for Ramadan at least three weeks in advance to make sure they arrive on time. Much of his inventory, which previously came through Dublin,…

RATHFRILAND, Northern Ireland —  It all started in 2017 with a trench. That year, a power company was preparing to build a 135-foot-tall wind turbine near the summit of Knock Iveagh, a pre-Christian ceremonial hill outside the market town of Rathfriland. Anne Harper, a musician and local whose spirituality is best described as “Celtic,” stared…

BELFAST – The Northern Ireland Interfaith Forum typically meets over lunch, but at a recent gathering, the secretary, Edwin Graham, wouldn’t even have a cup of coffee. It was during Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, he noted, and a fasting day for the Baha’i. “Apologies to our Muslim friends who are fasting at the moment,…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — On Saturdays, the Jewish day of rest and prayer, there is barely a quorum of 10 at the old synagogue in Northern Ireland’s capital city. But every other Wednesday, the place is hopping. A gaggle of seniors gathers for lectures, conversation, lunch and socializing. Only some of them are Jewish.  “I…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — On the eve of Saint Patrick’s Day this year, locals gathered to ring in the holiday at a local club with a musical display of Irish indigeneity. Amid shouts and cheers, Stephen Loughran, an Irish trad musician donning a druid-inspired ram skull, declared collective ancestry from the mythological warrior-hunter Fianna in…

TEMPLEPATRICK, Northern Ireland — Growing up, I had always heard tales that our family’s ancestry was Scots-Irish, via the Greer surname that I now carry as a middle name. But that alone isn’t enough to know where I come from — the Scots-Irish have a broad and complicated history. They’re tied to multiple U.S. presidents as well…

BELFAST — Inioluwa Olaosebikan, a 17-year-old immigrant from Nigeria, sits on the Belfast City Council where she advises the city on diversity and education for young people. She is one of the 25 young people from communities across Belfast shaping the council’s agenda. She also teaches young children coding and other computer and life skills.…

DUBLIN – For the last several decades, the Catholic Church of Ireland has been losing its followers at a rapid pace. Historically, the percentage of Catholics in Ireland has been among one of the highest of European countries. But between 2006 and 2022 the percentage of the Irish population that self-identifies as Catholic dropped from…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Yousif Alshewaili, a 24-year-old Muslim who fled his native Iraq (pictured above), was recently granted asylum status in Northern Ireland. He is thankful for the reception he has received in his new country but says that it often comes with strings attached. “People are super nice,” he said in a recent interview,…

DUBLIN — Nestled behind a South Asian restaurant, a hookah lounge and a tire repair shop is home to one of Ireland’s preeminent mosques: The Al-Mustafa Islamic Center. In March, on the first Jummah (Friday worship day) of Ramadan, hundreds of Muslim worshippers filed into the mosque, swapping their shoes for flip flops as they…

BLACKROCK, Ireland — On a cold, damp March afternoon, a bright orange door sat open, welcoming passers-by to the Methodist church in suburban Dublin. But Urban Junction, as the building is called, wasn’t being used for a Methodist service. A handful of people were filtering into the church, located at 42 Main St., Blackrock, County…

DUBLIN – James Cadden, who runs a comedy show at Ha’penny Bridge Inn in Dublin, was an altar boy in his childhood Catholic church in County Monaghan. Now, he spends a good chunk of his time on stage telling jokes about religion. “What do you call someone who doesn’t believe in God?” he asked at…

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — Christine Cowley still remembers what it felt like to lose her first love. She was just 19 when the young man she loved, Colm Keenan, was killed by a British army patrol in this divided city. But for more than 50 years, she’s kept that part of her life secret. “One…

DUBLIN — Kneeling down on the ground, Palestinian journalist Samia Alatrash wrapped her arms around the lifeless body of her two-year-old niece Masa. Israel’s bombing of Rafah in southern Gaza had killed Masa, her four-year-old sister Lina, and both their parents — in one day. October 21, 2023. As images of Samia hugging the tiny…

DUBLIN — On an overcast January afternoon in Kildare, Ireland, Úna-Minh Kavanagh, a journalist, married Pádhraic O’Hanrahan, a math lecturer, in a short but sweet wedding ceremony by green fields in the outskirts of town. Gathered at the on-site chapel of the Clanard Court Hotel, about an hour’s drive from Dublin, Kavanagh stood in a…

DUBLIN — A recent Youth Mass at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin started with a song that seemed to fit better in an evangelical worship service than among the Catholic rituals. A five-piece band led the congregation in an upbeat version of “Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be Your Name.” The next…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The walls that separate the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods of this Northern Irish city are officially known as the Peace Walls, not so much because they are peaceful places but because they have historically helped keep the peace in a divided city. Muralists have used these walls as a canvas to…

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (RNS) — On a cloudy fall day in 2021, about 100 people were praying in Derry’s only Sikh temple when smoke suddenly choked the prayer hall. Worshippers covered their mouths and noses and ran outdoors as flames consumed each room. Amerjit Singh, the president of the Northern Ireland Sikh Association, made sure…

DUBLIN (RNS) — The Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland was decorated with festive lights on the inside and outside as Ali Selim was getting ready for the morning prayers on Wednesday (April 10), to celebrate the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Fitr. In the corners of the center, stations with sweets and tea and coffee…

SAUL, Northern Ireland — Divisions along religious lines were heavy on the mind of Georgina Magine as she joined about 150 others for a drizzly prayer pilgrimage in County Down on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day. “We’re all divided in Northern Ireland, but we all claim St. Patrick,” said Magine, a first-timer at the…

DUBLIN (RNS) — At a Mass said in Latin on Sunday (March 10), Ireland’s traditional Catholics declared political victory, days after a pair of referendums aimed at secularizing the Irish Constitution were unexpectedly and resoundingly defeated. On Friday, the Irish government put two measures to a vote that would have extended the rights of unmarried…