"It was with extreme solicitude," wrote the Pope, "that we turned our mind to the unhappy events which in these later years have marked the history of Catholic education in Manitoba. … And since many expected that we should make a pronouncement on the question, and asked that we should trace a line of conduct and a way to be followed, we did not wish to decide anything on this subject before our Apostolic delegate had been on the spot, charged to proceed to a serious examination of the situation, and to give an account to us of the state of affairs. He has faithfully and diligently fulfilled the command which we had given him. The question agitated is one of great and exceptional importance. We speak of the decision taken seven years ago by the parliament of Manitoba on the subject of education. The act of Confederation had secured to Catholic children the right of education in public schools in keeping with their conscientious convictions. The parliament of Manitoba abolished this right by contrary law. By this latter law a grave injury was inflicted, for it was not lawful for our children to seek the benefits of education in schools in which the Catholic religion is ignored or actively combated, in schools where its doctrine is despised and its fundamental principles repudiated. If the Church has anywhere permitted this, it was only with great reluctance and in self-defense, and after having taken many precautions, which, however, have too often been found unequal to parrying the danger. In like manner one must at all cost avoid, as most pernicious, those schools wherein every form of belief is indifferently admitted and placed on an equal footing—as if in what regards God and Divine things, it was of no importance whether one believed rightly or wrongly, whether one followed truth or falsehood. You well know, venerable brothers, that all schools of this kind have been condemned by the Church, because there can be nothing more pernicious nor more fitted to injure the integrity of faith and to turn away the tender minds of youth from the truth. … For the Catholic there is but one true religion, the Catholic religion; hence in all that concerns doctrine, or morality, or religion, he cannot accept or recognize anything which is not drawn from the very sources of Catholic teaching. Justice and reason demand, then, that our children have in their schools not only scientific instruction but also moral teachings in harmony, as we have already said, with the principles of their religion, teachings without which all education will be not only fruitless but absolutely pernicious. Hence the necessity of having Catholic teachers, reading books, and textbooks approved of by the bishops, and liberty to organize the schools, that the teaching therein shall be in full accord with Catholic faith