25th July 2024 Geneva, Switzerland
Among my blessings in life is having an Irish mother-in law and I’m just back from a post-Council trip where my wife did some digging into her family history. A good number of her relatives were refugees fleeing persecution in both Eastern and Central Europe from the late 19th Century. Ireland was where they were […]
11th May 2016
In November 2014, I posted a blog about Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty, an extraordinary man who, during WWII, took risks for the Church, and saved lives. The next chapter in his story was written earlier this week, when family members, relatives of those he had saved and those who had worked with him, and others keen to […]
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5th November 2014
Pope Francis often talks of the need for priests to take risks, to get out into the streets, to live the message of the Gospel. This week I met a group of people who are living witnesses to just such an approach – descendants, relatives and friends of Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty, Major Sam Derry, and […]
30th April 2014
It has been an extraordinary few years for the relationship between the United Kingdom and Ireland. When Prime Minister David Cameron and Taoiseach Enda Kenny met in London in March, they commented that relations between our two countries had never been better. That’s a bold statement to make. And yet it was confirmed earlier this […]
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9th April 2014
A joint blog with the Irish Ambassador to Australia, HE Noel White When the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, this week pays the first State Visit to Britain by an Irish Head of State, it will be an historic and joyous occasion, mirroring that by Her Majesty the Queen, to Ireland, in 2011. The […]
30th January 2013 Washington DC, USA
I happened to be in Dublin four years ago when Ireland’s Rugby team won the Six Nation’s Tournament, sending the country into a swirl of excitement culminating in daylong welcome home celebration on the River Liffey, as well as the first I heard of team captain Brian O’Driscoll – nicknamed The BOD – a player […]
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31st January 2012
It is incumbent upon British ambassadors to understand the country that they serve. Which is why I spent much of last week in Northern Ireland, following similar “pastoral” tours in England and Scotland (Wales is still to do). I also took the opportunity to visit Dublin, given the fact that both the Roman Catholic and […]
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1st June 2011
I have just spent three weeks in the United Kingdom, attending our annual conference of ambassadors and talking to a wide range of people about the direction of British foreign policy in this second decade of the twenty first century. What is clear is that there is plenty to do. No country, least of all […]
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11th April 2011 New York, USA
Saturday 9 April was pretty ordinary for me and my family. We enjoyed the spring flowers during a walk in Central Park. My daughter found new ways to get mud on herself. For Nuala Kerr, it was far from ordinary. She was looking forward to enjoying the next day, mothering Sunday, with her family. Nuala […]
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