Tag Archives: Catholic schools

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Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin

Further to Minister for Children Dr James Reilly telling the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child last week that the divestment of existing school patronage in Ireland is slow…

Breakingnews.ie reports:

Priests should not baptise children whose parents are just trying to get them into better schools, the Archbishop of Dublin [Diarmuid Martin] has said.

…”It’s [just] not this baptismal certificate – it’s a religious … entry into the life of the church, and to baptise somebody for any other reasons is wrong.

“Parents, you know, shouldn’t be presenting children to be baptised in that way – but priests shouldn’t be doing it either.”

Archbishop: Priests should not baptise children just to help with admission to schools (Breakingnews.ie)

Previously: ‘Divestment Of School Patronage Is Slow’

Educate And Party Together

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

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The Educate Together Facebook page today

This morning’s Irish Times reveals how Hindu couple Roopesh Panicker and his wife Najamol Kalangara struggled to find a place for their four-year-old daughter Eva at any of the Catholic schools near their home.

They were repeatedly told, under the schools’ enrolment policies, the schools were entitled to give preference to Catholic children.

Eva is now attending a Catholic school a half-hour’s drive away.

Mr Panicker said

“It is a big Catholic school with lots of spaces. But all the children on our road go to the school across the park. She asks, ‘Daddy why do I not go to the same school as my friends’? I don’t want to fill her head about discrimination, so I tell her little lies about how her school is bigger and better. But she will keep asking and I will have to tell her eventually.”

Further to this, comments on the Educate Together website suggest this problem only worsens when parents are trying to find a secondary school place for their non-Catholic children.

Anyone?

Hindu family fails to get place for child in local school (Irish Times)

Educate Together (Facebook)