Costa Rican Archbishop: Catholic education is key for evangelization

San José, Costa Rica, Feb 8, 2007 / 10:06 am

In a message to the faithful on the occasion of the beginning of the 2007 school year in Costa Rica, Archbishop Hugo Barrantes Urena of San Jose said that Catholic education is a fundamental instrument of the Church for evangelization.

In his message published by “Eco Catolico,” the archbishop noted “the work that has been and is done by teachers, in different fields, ways and educational levels in our country, for the good of children and young people, for the purpose of raising up better citizens.”

Archbishop Barrantes recalled that parents have the responsibility of being the “primary educators of their children, a task to which teachers contribute from the classroom.”

However, he underscored that the Church, “as Mother and Teacher, in the process of the New Evangelization, contributes to this comprehensive formation through religion classes.”

Through the Church’s religious education she offers the Gospel to the human person, she provides religious principles and Christian ethics that strengthen the educational process in the doctrinal dimension, she seeks to achieve the dialogue between faith and culture and the coherence between faith and life in the educational process, so that students adopt Christian values as an element of cultural identity, necessary for an ecclesial commitment and service to the Gospel, and thus they can bring the Gospel into the sphere of the family, the workplace, the economy, science, art, literature and the media,” the archbishop said.

Therefore, Archbishop Barrantes encouraged “mothers and fathers, priests and all those charged with the care of childhood and youth education to support the religious formation that is provided by school religion classes, so that children and young people can have solid Christian principles in order to live out the commitment to be sons and daughters of God in the 21st century.”