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More than 100 delegates from across Ireland and Britain will gather in St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church this weekend, for the Romanian Orthodox church’s annual Youth Congress of Nepsis, which this year takes place in Galway.

For the past eight years the rector of Galway’s much-loved St Nicholas’s Collegiate Church has been Reverend Gary Hastings, an amiable Belfastman who is esteemed in Irish traditional music circles as a flute player.

The village of Knock is preparing for an influx of up to 120,000 to 150,000 people next week during the National Novena to Our Lady of Knock - which will run from Monday, August 14, to Wednesday, August 23. The annual novena at the Marian Shrine is one of the biggest events to draw people into the county each year and this year is no different. This year is the 40th year of the National Novena to Our Lady of Knock, the original intention behind the Novena was to recognise the unique role that Knock has to play in the life of the Irish church. The theme of this year's pilgrimage is 'Living Life to the Full' and there will be a number of guest speakers, and daily workshops along with services taking place over the nine days of the novena. Ceremonies will take place at 3pm and 8.30pm and workshops at 12 noon and 6pm each day.

The High Sheriff of Mayo was the British Crown’s representative in the county from the post’s creation in 1583 until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. In a country where ownership of land carried huge prestige, the landed had to protect what they held by securing positions of power. So it was in County Mayo that the dominant families of Browne, Bingham and Gore isolated the role of High Sheriff largely for themselves up until the 19th century at least, from which time family names such as O’Donel, Knox, Blake and others appear in the records as holders of the office.

In the 1650s, Catholics were uprooted from their productive, arable, lands in several Irish counties by Oliver Cromwell’s Protestant army and forced at musket point to desolate, barren, Connacht. Their confiscated lands, the better holdings in Ireland, were distributed to Protestant settlers, Cromwell’s army as pay, and carved up to pay debts. Maps of Ireland, pre and post Cromwell, detailing the regression of the predominantly Catholic associated Irish language and customs point to a culture that was deliberately and officially forced to areas thought of as being so inhospitable they would not survive. County Mayo was included among these religious and cultural ghettoes. The living standards of the banished Catholics fell dangerously low and remained so for centuries. Christian duty led some within the Protestant clergy to later establish evangelical missions in the wild Irish west to give relief to the descendants of those very same Catholics. Salvation and, dishonourably, food were offered through conversion to Protestantism. Whereas 17th century Protestants believed it was God's will that godless Catholics be sent to suffer and perhaps perish in Mayo, 19th century Protestants believed it was His will that these (still godless) Catholics be reclaimed so that they might be saved. The Rev Edward Nangle's Achill Island Mission set out to do just that in 1831.

During her first visit to Ireland while walking the road from Oranmore to Loughrea, Aesnath Nicholson, a lone witness to the growing desperation of the poor as successive years of the Great Famine took its frightening toll, stopped to rest her blistered feet. She leant against a wall and thought about the advice her friends had given her in America. They told her the trip was reckless and she would damage her health. Yet even at that moment she asked herself: Would she rather be back in her parlour in New York?

According to the latest figures from the CSO, there were 753 marriages in Mayo last year, including 10 same sex marriages. The figures show that the vast majority of marriages were Roman Catholic marriages with 592 taking place. The next highest number was 101 civil marriages, of which seven were between same sex couples.

The Holy Trinity Church, Newport Road, Westport will hold a fundraising concert night with country gospel singer James Kilbane on Friday October 21 at 8pm. This concert is in support of the church's local fundraising efforts which is being undertaken to cover costs and pay for restoration work to the Holy Trinity building.

The Church of Ireland at Ardrahan will hold a concert on Friday November 11 at 8pm, entitled Music and Musings.

MICHAEL MCHALE, the Irish classical pianist, who playing has been described as "delicately graded and infallibly clear" by The Irish Times and filled with "lucidity and elegance" by The Daily Telegraph, will play two shows in County Galway.