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1 week ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
In 1988, when I was six months old, my British father and Polish mother took me to meet my family in Krakow. My parents brought an extra suitcase filled with disposable nappies because such luxuries weren’t sold on the other side of the Iron Curtain. At the time, there was only one shop in Krakow that sold foreign goods, but my father was pleased to discover that a gallon of whisky could be bought for only $8.
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Dec 9, 2024 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
The chief architect of Notre Dame has revealed his devotion to Our Lady, saying that he believes she gave him the strength to complete the restoration of the French Cathedral after it was almost completely destroyed in a fire in 2019.
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Nov 3, 2024 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
The Bishop of Leeds has today urged the people of his diocese to ask their MPs to vote against assisted suicide, warning that assisted suicide can “never be autonomous in nature” because of the impact each individual death will have on the family, friends and healthcare professionals associated with it. In the letter published in Leeds on 30th October, The Right Rev.
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Jun 17, 2024 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
At about midnight, after a sleepless two hours of lying in bed listening to my baby coughing in his sleep over the monitor, I decided it was time to act. I administered a syringe full of Calpol first to him and then to myself before going back to bed and finally falling asleep. Every mother knows what it feels like to be this sleep-deprived.
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May 31, 2024 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
As I write, a measles outbreak has been declared in South East Wales where I live. Four people, apparently, have been diagnosed with measles not far from our home in the past few weeks.
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May 4, 2024 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
“Why does he smell so good?” my eldest daughter, Ophelia, asked. She and her sister had just arrived at the hospital to meet their new baby brother. Only a few hours earlier, as the girls were eating their breakfast of pancakes and chocolate spread, they had watched me tear through the kitchen and into the car. “The baby is coming!” my worried mother explained. “I can’t believe I have a baby brother,” Ophelia said, holding him on her lap for the first time, and has said many times since.
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Jan 3, 2024 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
‘I can’t believe you’re about to have your third baby and I haven’t even had my first,” said an old girlfriend wistfully over supper the other night. This was not the first time I’d noticed this, although no one really talks about it, that women, when they enter their mid-to-late 30s, suddenly become very starkly divided between those who have children and those who don’t, with the ones who don’t suddenly facing the very real prospect of remaining that way for ever.
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Oct 18, 2023 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
Following the Polish elections last week, the assumption is that over the next few weeks a new government will form as a result of a coalition between three parties led by Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (Koalicja Obywatelska or “KO”), a so-called “centre right” party with a strong pro-EU stance and a socially liberal agenda.
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Sep 27, 2023 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
I spent nearly a month in Poland this summer because my widowed, childless aunt died unexpectedly and left me and my mother with a mountain of “death-min” which we have still nowhere near dealt with. The media and political classes present us with a confused portrait of what Poland is really like. On the one hand, we hear reports that the country is thriving economically, on course to overtake Britain’s GDP by 2034.
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Aug 31, 2023 | 
catholicherald.co.uk | Olenka Hamilton
Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen is on trial this week for “hate speech” and “ethnic agitation” after publicly sharing in 2019 her biblical, religious views on marriage as between one man and one woman. Räsänen, 63, is being tried for violating Finland’s hate speech laws by using Bible verses to express her support for traditional marriage. Her trial takes place today, August 31 and tomorrow, September 1.
