A Story of peace

Six Catholic and six Protestant schools sharing the same teachers, social structures and laboratories on the site where the most powerful bomb of Northern Ireland’s conflict exploded. In Omagh, on August 16 1998 the Ira, the terrorist movement for united Ireland, exploded the bomb which killed 29 people and left hundreds wounded. In that same city Catholics and Protestants want to give life to a common educational village which will spread the message that this land, marked by blood-shedding, has finally started breathing the air of peace and has placed the foundation of a mixed educational system where two different communities live one in the respect of the other’s identity. The last word will be pronounced by the Ministry of Defense which owns the strip of land where the new village of educated integration – this is the name given to mixed Catholic-Protestant schools in Northern Ireland- is supposed to be erected. We asked three protagonists of this story of peace, conservative MP MICHAEL MATES , President of Westminster’s Information and Security Commission, BARRY MCELDUFF , MP for the Sinn Fein, the political party which represents the Ira, and Msgr. DONAL MCKEOWN , auxiliary bishop of Down and Conor, in charge of the education sector in Northern Ireland for the Irish Bishops Conference, to talk to us about the new village. 50THOUSAND EMPTY SCHOOLDESKS. It was an idea of two priests, Msgr. Joseph Donnelly, parish priest of Drumragh, which includes most of the city of Omagh, and Robert Heron, a Protestant pastor who is also from Omagh. The “Western Education and Library Board” relauched the project with enthusiasm. “The fact that I work on this project in team with a ‘Sinn Fein’ party member proves the extent to which things have changed”, said Hon. Mates. “We learned to work together in the Irish-British inter-parliamentary committee which we are both members of. Let’s hope that our joint action will convince the State Minister for Northern Ireland Shaun Woodward to persuade the Minister of Defense to hand the grounds over”. “I will be meeting the Minister for Northern Ireland Shaun Woodward at the beginning of January and I hope that she has good news for our project which also solves a practical problem of our schools, the lack of students”, McElduff explained. “There’s an estimated number of 50 thousand empty schooldesks in Ireland and in many villages it no longer makes sense to have two separate schools, a Protestant and a Catholic one. Concentrating schools in a single one would also make property available for new urban projects”. A STRONG BOND. “The Catholic Church is in favor of the project”, said the auxiliary bishop of Down and Conor, Msgr. McKeown. “I think it would be better to have independent schools which share the same structure and teachers. In Catholic schools the presence of students from different religions is ever more common for the arrival of hundreds of foreigners in Northern Ireland, for the first time in history. Also Protestants, since public schools became more secular, often choose Catholic Institutes for their children since these ensure Christian education”. According to the bishop, “the problem of the future will be religious indifference, not the presence of different religions, that is, how Christians can maintain an educational presence in an ever more secularized world. Not counting the fact that there are complementary experiences”, said Msgr. McKeown. “For example, Catholic schools have always high school results despite the fact that students are poorer. This happens because there is a strong bond between the school and the students’ communities of origin which is lacking in state schools”. CONTACTS TO BE PROMOTED. In Northern Ireland the educational system has always been separate, with Catholic students attending only Catholic Schools and Protestant students attending public or Protestant schools. At the end of the 1970s, government surveys highlighted the fact that this approach actually increased interreligious conflict. Since then, numerous State-sponsored projects promoted exchanges between the Catholics and the Protestant schools. Today in Northern Ireland there are 547 Catholic Schools. There are 329.583 students, 45% of whom, that is, 148.225, attend Catholic Schools. Until today, one third of elementary Catholic schools and half of secondary schools have had some contact with state or Protestant schools. With the establishment of Northern Ireland in 1921, the Protestant community decided to transfer its schools to the State while the Catholic Church kept control of her own schools. The Protestant Church until today enjoyed the right to appoint four members of the School Commission. The State intends to abolish this prerogative in the new schools that are still to be erected, leaving it only in the old-dated schools. This brings about a situation of discomfort among Protestants since state schools are increasingly secularized to the detriment of Christian education.