There was a time not so long ago when the family dog slept in the yard, the cat prowled the hedgerows for mice, and neither would have known what to do with a birthday cake shaped like a bone.

“We have not much time left!” The Greek MEP was on her feet, waving her arms with the kind of fervour usually reserved for Eurovision voting scandals.

We can be stuck on the wrong thing sometimes. When it comes to the health of our democracy, we have been worrying for years about low voter turnout. The last general election caused particular concern. With turnout in that election estimated at ...

My stay in Mayo University Hospital coincided with that of Pope Francis while he was being treated for double pneumonia in Rome. Now, I’m not making any comparisons, just pointing out a fact.

Today, May 7, 2025, the 252 members of the College of Cardinals, 135 who are under 80 and therefore qualify to vote, will enter the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where they will be traditionally corralled out of sight and out of reach until two-thirds of ...

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me  No bird, but an invisible thing,  A voice, a mystery.

I don’t know about you people out there, but I think it’s great to be back. The Return of Loftus at Large went missing from the WP for a number of weeks, a good number of weeks, due to issues - as they say in the best of circles - beyond my control.

For those of us born in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was beginning to feel like there would only ever be one pope. Pope John Paul II was such a constant in our upbringing in a very different Ireland. Many homes had framed photos of him.

What on earth is all this going to do to us? Four more years of this? It really feels like too much already, and we are only a few months in. Trump’s second presidency is so different from his first one.

Somewhere on my first travels to the United States during Obama’s inaugural election campaign, I must have slipped into a parallel Batman universe - a weird combination of the original campy and bumbling Adam West version which aired on TV in the ...