Catechism in school

last updated 8 January 2015

Madrid

The Spanish government announced this week that religion would be a required subject in high school. Students must take either a course on Catholicism, taught by Catholic priests, or a survey course on religious thought. Catholic bishops have been lobbying for the official addition to the curriculum for years. But some parents groups and Spain’s main teacher organization see the change as a troubling breach of church-state separation enshrined in the country’s 1978 constitution. Former culture minister Jose Sole Tura, who helped draft the constitution, called the religion requirement “absurd, stupid, and a serious mistake—a return to the Franco era.” Under the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, Catholicism was the state religion.