SIR'-The front and back page of your April 20 issue, placed side by side, illustrate a tendency which might seem to be morally wrong. On the one hand we see £200,000 and 11+ million being spent on two shrines; and on the other hand we see that 85 per cent of sonic 400,000 people live at subhuman level in Bogota and that there is a gigantic crisis in Catholic education.
I would be interested to hear somebody justify such expenditure in the face of such need and I will stick my neck out to say that a Catholic school is far more important than a splendid church; that essential social services are more important to Bogota than any shrine is to America or Nagasaid. I suppose that the I,iturgy can be carried out in the most simple of buildings but Catholic education needs modern, wellequipped schools. Unless you educate your Catholics and, in the more extreme cases, provide social services, then you will perform your Liturgy to almost empty pews, no matter how beautifully the churches may be done up.
James Mulligan
Twickenham, Middlesex.