The 17th world assembly of the International Office of Catholic Education (IOCE), representing over 100 representatives of Catholic schools throughout the world, ended at Santiago de Compostela in Spain on 25 May. Archbishop Julián Barrio of Santiago, in his address to the meeting, recalled “the mood of uncertainty that Catholic schools are experiencing at the present time, concerned about how to forge the Christian lifestyle in a pluralist society like our own, knowing that the truth cannot be imposed, but can only be spread through the power of the truth itself”. The archbishop said that Catholic schools must preserve their identity in the face of the philosophical and educational currents that reign today and that “strengthen scientific and technological knowledge… with the danger of not giving importance to the humanistic and moral knowledge that alone is able to guide and give meaning to life”. The specific quality of Catholic schools, continued the archbishop, “consists in the service to integral formation, which is a project in which the Catholic faith enters into dialogue with culture”. The IOCE is a NGO that represents Catholic education at the global level, with its headquarters in Brussels. Founded in Lucerne (Switzerland) in 1952, it represents over 44 million pupils throughout the world, of whom 9,000,000 in Europe.
