Sarajevo, October 21, 1998 (IKA/KTA) – “It is disturbing that the aggression and tragic war are being used as excuses for imposing various school programs and textbooks, not merely as a factor of differences but of dangerous antagonisms. It is not difficult to assess their completely negative psychological impact on schoolchildren. It is a great pity that neither international nor domestic well-intentioned institutions have found a suitable solution and are content with preserving #!equality#! in cases when this is worse than diversity.” Thus, the current educational situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina was evaluated by Auxiliary Bishop Pero Sudar of Sarajevo. In an interview he gave to the Catholic Press Agency of the Bishops#! Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina (KTA), Bishop Sudar commented on the headlines in some newspapers on the occasion of the opening of a Catholic school in the Sarajevo district of Stup: “Catholic schools were established out of necessity in an attempt to offer a plan and program suitable for the students attending them. With the attitude expressed by the media and public officials, they will have difficulty becoming a challenge and model for state schools … Whoever wants to organize anything for a better future in this country, i.e., the peaceful coexistence of its citizens, must find a way to protect fundamental human rights on the one side and the identity of each of the constituent nations on the other.” In Bishop Sudar#!s opinion, this process will neither be rapid nor easy, and the plans and programs in schools will be one of the precise gauges of the extent that the people in Bosnia-Herzegovina “turn with love to the future, renouncing all the chains of the past.” The opening of the Catholic school in Bosnia-Herzegovina did not occur without numerous difficulties, because “everything is seen through the prism of politics and party #!suitability#! … Our schools are registered and accredited in the same manner and by the same authorized municipal or in other cases federal institutions but these same institutions recognize rights in one city and in another do not recognize the rights to which schools are entitled. This refers to the legal position and the material treatment of our schools. For example, in Zenica for the fourth year the municipality and canton refuse to treat our schools in the same manner as the others. A ruling by the Federal Ministry means nothing to them. In Konjic, the authorized ministry refused to accredit the school exclusively for political reasons. Attempts concerning the return of school buildings owned by the Church or even obtaining permits for building new ones are truly Sisyphean tasks.” Bishop Sudar added: “In everything, it is comforting that we live in a time and under conditions when it appears that only #!Sisyphean projects,#! i.e. those in which it is always valuable to begin from the beginning, make sense.”