Traditionally Catholic Ireland has allowed an atheist group to perform weddings this year for the first time, and the few people certified to celebrate them are overwhelmed by hundreds of couples seeking their services.
Demand for the Humanist Association of Ireland's secular weddings has surged as the moral authority of the once almighty Catholic Church collapsed in recent decades amid sex abuse scandals and Irish society's rapid secularization.
Until now, those who did not want a religious wedding could have only civil ceremonies. Outside of the registrar's office, only clergy were permitted to perform weddings.
But statistics show rising demand for non-Church weddings. In 1996, 90 percent of Irish weddings were performed by the Catholic Church or the Church of Ireland. But by 2010 that percentage had fallen to 69 percent.
The Israeli Knesset on Monday passed a death penalty law targeting Palestinians, in a move condemned...
Israeli forces blocked two senior Catholic leaders from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in...
One of the Kremlin’s most widely viewed advocates of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Yuri Podolyaka,...
Israeli forces killed at least eight people in attacks on police stations and another location in...
