Catholic education should flourish under the leadership of the laity, a bishop said.Bishop of Kilmore Leo O'Reilly said the church was not abandoning schooling but moving into the future.
He delivered the homily at Mass to mark the official launch of the Presentation Brothers' Schools Trust at St Joseph's, Wilton, Cork.
"Far from being a sign that the church is getting out of education, this trust and others like it are the first shoots of a new flourishing of Catholic education under the leadership and direction of competent, dedicated and committed lay Catholic people," he said.
He said the trusts were church bodies just as much as religious congregations are.
The only difference was that their members are the laity.
When the issue of lay trusts first came to the fore, the news that the religious leaders were going to hand their schools over to lay control was seen by many as the church getting out of education.
But Bishop O'Reilly said that was off the mark.
"And that is the second thing we celebrate today - in the famous phrase of Cardinal (John Henry) Newman, a second spring for Catholic education into the future under the direction of largely lay leadership," he added.
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