Mary Whelan

Retired Nurse Manager. Comhaltas volunteer at every level. Carer. Passionate about justice, equality and human rights. Set dance for fun.

[Fr. Paddy @frpaddybyrne]

A sad day for our parish. Yet another loved and cherished life lost by suicide. Prayers for all who carry the silent and heavy burden of mental illness.

[JIM FITZPATRICK @jimfitzpatrick]

Mehole is determined to force Ireland into #NATOs new EU army, same with Simple Simon.
Defying Connolly,Collins, and their own heroes Dev, Lemass, Aiken -who ALL fought for #IrishNeutrality.

Taoiseach's #TripleLock plan facing backbench pushback https://t.co/QPxNbj0Efb via @rte

[Éigse Diarmuidín @eigse]

📣 Tá dátaí Éigse Dhiarmuid Uí Shúilleabháin 2026 deimhnithe. 📣

Beidh Éigse na bliana seo ar siúl i gCúil Aodha agus i mBaile Mhúirne, i gcroílár Mhúscraí, ón Aoine 4 Nollaig go dtí an Domhnach 6 Nollaig 2026.

Deireadh seachtaine ceoil, amhránaíochta, ceardlann, seisiúin agus traidisiúin beo i gcuimhne ar Dhiarmuidín.

Cuir sa dialann é. Tuilleadh le teacht go luath.

Save the date: Éigse Dhiarmuid Uí Shúilleabháin returns from 4–6 December 2026 in Cúil Aodha and Baile Mhúirne.

#Eigse26 / https://t.co/hnkgWCcmYs

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel killed Zahra and her entire family today in Sharqiyeh, South Lebanon.

They dropped a bomb on their home as they slept at night — massacring them instantly.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Chicago, it’s good to be home!

Michelle and I built the Obama Presidential Center to be a place where people of all ages can learn, play, and work – and we can't wait to welcome you all later this week!

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

1 in 20 Catholic families were burned out of their homes in Belfast in 1969.

As one scholar put it, at the time it was "the largest forced population movement in Western Europe since the Second World War."

[Daniel Lambert @dlLambo]

Ireland must not play Israel in the UEFA nations league.

#StopTheGame

[sarah @sahouraxo]

BREAKING:

This is Gaza right now.

Israel is raining bombs on civilian areas in the middle of the night while people sleep.

Not a peep from the complicit international community, of course.

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity.

“You are not numbers or case files.

“You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” — Pope Leo XIV

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

It’s simple: tenants have the legal right to safe and habitable housing, and my administration is committed to making sure that right is upheld.

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel just executed Ali in South Lebanon.

He wasn’t a fighter.

He was a paramedic.

Israel killed him while he was on the frontlines saving lives.

Israel has now murdered over 135 medics in Lebanon in just 3 months.

And not a peep from the complicit international community.

[Mary Whelan @setdance]

@Jeanie61Don @breakingnewsie Austrian which means he was from Austria.

[Daniel Lambert @dlLambo]

A 72 year old man was savaged stabbed to death in his home in Dungannon last year.

There was no rampaging gangs "protecting their communities".

Guess why?

Because the victim was polish and the murderer was a "local" man.

These aren't concerned citizens they're racists.

[Paulina Guzik @Guzik_Paulina]

In what will certainly become one of the most fundamental speeches of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV told the Spanish Parliament, before receiving a 7-minute standing ovation: "The defense of human life is neither a partisan issue nor a confessional interest: it is a goal of civilization."

"If life ceases to be recognized as a fundamental value, what future can our societies have?" he said, speaking to a gathering of politicians, many supporting abortion and euthanasia.

"Can a community that casts into the shadows the unborn child, the elderly, the sick, those who suffer in silence, or those who depend entirely on the care of others be called fully just?"

"Every human life must be recognized and safeguarded from conception to its natural end, in every circumstance of its existence. When this certainty is obscured, the most vulnerable are the first victims, and the law loses its deepest meaning: to serve and protect every person."

"For this reason, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect and love those lives that are most fragile," he said, repeating what John Paul II emphasized decades ago.

Starting his speech he commented that Church's is the "message offered in the spirit of service to the human person."

"When the Church addresses anything concerning public life, she does so while respecting the proper mission of institutions and the legitimate responsibility of those who have received the mandate to legislate," Pope Leo said, emphasizing "the Church offers a reflection born of the desire to serve the common good."

He hailed Spain as country that "has known how to view the human being as more than just a cog in the social, economic or political order. It has recognized the human being as a creature open to truth, endowed with freedom, and driven by a thirst for eternity that no temporal reality can quench -- in a word, as someone whose dignity takes precedence over all utility and to whose service legislative action is subject."

He said it was Catholic orders that "helped to shape a legal and moral consciousness capable of remembering that authority always entails responsibility and that every human being must be recognized as a subject of rights and duties."

"That aspiration continues to resonate today: that dignity, justice and the common good should be the measure of social relations, both at the national and international levels."

Referring multiple times to his "Magnifica Humanitas" encyclical, he said: "When the common good ceases to be a shared horizon, public action runs the risk of fragmenting into partial interests, incapable of safeguarding what belongs to all."

"In this context, the family — the primary human reality and the natural foundation of the community — takes on particular importance," Pope Leo said.

"The family will always be the first school of humanity, where one learns, before anywhere else, the basic grammar of living together: welcoming life, caring for others, forgiving, serving and belonging."

"Human life can never be treated as a commodity," the pope said.

"A law does not attain its true greatness merely by having been formally enacted; it attains it when, in addition to being valid in form, it can stand before the dignity of the person and pass that test without shame."

"I invite you, then, to lift your gaze to the world around you, not to turn away from reality, but to remember that every decision by public authorities affects real people, especially those who have less power to make their voices heard."

"The expanse of one’s vision consists precisely in looking more deeply at what is at stake in every public decision. This is why, alongside technical solutions and legal reforms, a moral renewal is also needed."

Video: Vatican Media
(fragment of speech follows)

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

Crazy that this is getting barely any coverage. This year’s European Press Prize was just awarded to an investigative report by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. It is entitled “What the Wounds Tell” and in it the journalists Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra document the cases of 114 children in Gaza under the age of 15 who were struck by a single bullet to the head or chest. Almost all of them died or were left severely disabled. They chose to document only the cases of boys and girls under the age of 15 (though often much younger: aged 3, 4 or 7) because these are children who can be immediately identified as such. “A single bullet in these parts of the body is a clear indication that these children were deliberately targeted“, the two journalists write.

This is the article: https://t.co/YkZrpqBWBQ

[John Collins @Logically_JC]

I was told he would bankrupt the city and destroy everything.

[Daniel Lambert @dlLambo]

As our Taoiseach tells us to shut up and play football against Israel....their army is illegally kidnapping Palestinian national team players.

#StopTheGame

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

In America today, we rank 34th out of 35 countries in childhood poverty and millions of children are food insecure.

Maybe, just maybe, my Republican colleagues would consider holding a single hearing about how we improve the lives of American kids.