Catholic schools' success 'will ensure their future'

Published on Thursday 4 May 2006 01:49

THE future of Catholic schools in Scotland is secure on the basis of their academic success, insisted Mario Conti, the Archbishop of Glasgow, who also gave his support to the creation of Muslim faith schools if properly run.

He said: "I have been more convinced as time goes on that the benefit of the Catholic school is not only the benefit of faith to the Catholic community but the educational benefit to the community which the Church has traditionally served and continues to serve in areas of social deprivation."

At St Albert's Primary School in Glasgow, where 80 per cent of pupils are non-Catholic and the majority are Muslim, a small group of parents have been pushing to have the school reclassified as a Muslim faith school. However the archbishop said: "Although there has been a spot of trouble at St Albert's, I'm assured that it can be reduced to very few people among the parent body."

The archbishop said that, in principle, he supports the idea of Muslim schools, but insists they have to be properly run.

"I absolutely support the right to Muslim schools," he said.

"But the state has the right to ensure that those who are educated in the school are well- educated, educated in a way that ensures that those who attend are good citizens and can be depended upon to take their part comfortably and beneficially in society in which they are going to live."

On the subject of the Act of Settlement, the law that prohibits a Catholic from marrying the heir to the throne, he felt that while "ridiculous and outdated" there was not any urgency to repeal it.

"The time for changing it will be if the heir to the throne got engaged to a lovely Catholic gal who he and everybody wanted to be his bride and possible future queen."