Religious instruction serves secular society, Pope says
April 27, 2009
At an April 25 audience with Italian religion teachers, Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended instruction in the Catholic faith as "an inherent part of the history of education in Italy." Students who learn more about the faith, he said, are equipped "to draw from the gifts of the past in order to understand the present and to project themselves toward the future." Rejecting the idea that religious instruction is "a form of interference or a restriction on freedom," he said that the teachers' work embodies a "positive spirit of secularism" through which religious principles are introduced into civil society.
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