Free Republic

CHICAGO - For more than a century, Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary has quietly prepared teenage boys for the priesthood, largely unchanged as the city transformed around it from gritty industrial center to gleaming modern metropolis. But another kind of change finally caught up with Quigley. The 102-year-old seminary _ housed in a Gothic-style building that looks like it belongs on a square in Europe instead of in a tony Chicago shopping district _ will close its doors for good in two weeks because of a shrinking student body that has seen just one graduate ordained in the last 17 years....

he vilification of religious orders, such as the Christian Brothers and the Mercy Sisters, may have contributed to the scant media coverage the Nora Wall case received, writes Conor Brady On 1 December, a 56 year old woman entered the Court of Criminal Appeal in Dublin to seek a judicial declaration that she was innocent of a terrible crime, allegedly committed many years before. Grey-haired and thin, she appeared older than her years. Accompanied by her lawyers and her family, she entered and left the Four Courts without uttering a word. Six years previously, Nora Wall had been convicted in...