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THE EDUCATION PROFILE: BISHOP LEO O'REILLY, CHAIRMAN OF THE BISHOPS' COMMISSION FOR EDUCATION:As keeper of the Catholic flame, Bishop Leo O'Reilly is keen to ensure that matters of faith are still given robust consideration in a new educational landscape which reflects the diversity of a new Ireland, writes Patsy McGarry

AT A RECENT history seminar in Trinity College Dublin, biographer Anthony Jordan recalled "life as it used to be" when it came to the Catholic bishops in Ireland. He remembered a talk at a 1955 conference by the then Bishop of Cork and Ross, Most Rev Cornelius Lucey. Referring to the Mother and Child scheme opposed by the Catholic bishops and which in 1951 brought down the State's first inter-party government, Lucey noted that "the church was not just one group among the many groups making up the State, but had a firmer and broader base than any of them.