Scotland united
Some stories about Scotland’s towns focus on the tribal hostility between Catholic and Protestant communities. So it is encouraging to read a story that has cooperation and amity at its heart.

Earlier this month, a book about Paisley School was launched at Paisley Abbey by Bishop John Keenan and the abbey’s minister, the Rev. Alan Birss. The author is retired head teacher Tom Higgins, who has researched the foundation in October 1816 of a school run by 12 Catholics and 12 Protestants and largely taught by two French priests who had fled their country as refugees from the French Revolution.

One of them, Abbé Despraux, had the idea to provide an educational establishment for the children of Paisley’s industrialists, and reach out to the growing Catholic population, which at the time had high levels of illiteracy. Bishop Keenan said the book illustrated “how these far-sighted pastors could break down barriers to promote what we would recognise today as Christian unity”.