A meeting of experts in the teaching of Catholic religion from all over Europe, to discuss how to be present at school, in a ‘soundly lay’ atmosphere of comparison between cultures and religions”: it is the purpose of the XIII Forum for religion school teaching, scheduled in Hungary in 2008, with the title “Learning to Live Together in Peace. Christianity and Laity: an Intercultural Challenge”, set up by the European network EuFRES, a group of experts who gathered in Budapest in the last few days, for preparing the event. The choice of the topic, explained Msgr. Manlio Asta, director of the Office for the school pastoral of the diocese of Rome, and member of EuFRES, “depends on the fact that we are convinced that school may also be a place for freedom of teaching as well as freedom of religion”. The subject intends “to encourage reflection on the challenges which inevitably intercultural and interreligious teaching has to accept”. Speakers should be from Turkey, Spain, Austria, and Italy. “A sound laity – declared Msgr. Asta to the Hungarian Catholic agency Magyar Kurìr, – does not imply silence, but the duty to speak, to teach and to acquire the authoritativeness enabling people to listen to the teachings of the Church”.
