Diversity and Healing in Ireland.

Ireland's government is moving forward with plans to end the Catholic Church's monopoly of the nation's primary school system. More diversity in institutions and ideas will be good for students. The change should promote healing in a country traumatized by the church's cover-up of years of sexual abuse of children by rogue priests. An initial government study last week identified 50 schools in Dublin and 43 towns where the demand for multi-denominational education was greatest and school control could be shifted to other sponsors, secular or religious. The government has not yet announced a timetable, emphasizing that the shift will be respectful of religious tradition but firmly nondiscriminatory. Ruairi Quinn, the education minister, foresees ''radical change,'' estimating that as many as 1,500 of the 3,169 schools controlled by the church will eventually be transferred to other sponsors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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