Pope Seeks Catholic School Aid From New Italian Leader.

Pope John Paul II is hoping to win government aid for Catholic schools in Italy from what many consider an unlikely source -- the country's new prime minister, who is a former Communist.

The pope first raised the call for private school aid during an Oct. 23 mass before students at Vatican City, then repeated it the next day during a meeting with Catholic school students and their parents.

Although Italy is 90 percent Catholic and has a long cultural association with the church, the country does not extend aid to parochial schools.

"Together we renew our appeal to the competent authorities so that Catholic schools can live and grow and so that their equal dignity with public schools will be recognized," said the pope during the Oct. 24 meeting. "How can we not be saddened when we see prestigious institutes, appreciated by families, being forced to close? I hope that this phenomenon, which constitutes a serious impoverishment of the entire Italian scholastic reality, will soon end."

The number of Catholic schools in Italy declined 8 percent between 1986 and 1996, and enrollment has dropped 26 percent. Currently, 10.6 percent of Italy's school-aged children attend Catholic institutions.

A few days before the speeches, John Paul paid an official visit to Italian President Luigi Scalfaro. Also in attendance was Massimo d'Alemo, the former Communist and new prime minister, who heads Italy's Left Democrats. The New York Times reported that during his remarks, the pope called for better relations between church and state but added that the church still wants to see an end to legal abortion in Italy.

Early church reaction to d'Alemo was harsh. In mid October the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano editorialized, "Fifty years after the hard-won victory of liberty and democracy over Communism, the head of state has entrusted the task of forming a new government to an apparatchik of the former Communist Party."

But since then both camps seem to be trying to warm up to one another. The Times reported that d'Alemo is well aware that the church remains a powerful player in Italian politics and is not likely to do anything to upset the delicate power-sharing arrangement that marks the country's political system. Asked by reporters if he would use his meeting with the pope to clarify their relationship, d'Alemo replied, "I have no quarrel with the Holy Father, so I have nothing to clarify."

In other news from overseas:

* A court in Berlin, Germany, has ruled that Muslim students are entitled to voluntary religious instruction in public schools. Previously, classes had been offered only for Roman Catholic and Protestant students. Education officials had long resisted making them available to the city's 35,000 Muslim students.

Religious instruction is mandatory in many of Germany's public schools, but Berlin is one of three federal regions that have made it voluntary. About 40 percent of the students attend the classes, reported The New York Times.

* India's ruling Hindu nationalist party has backed away from a proposal to require the study of sacred religious texts in public schools after a storm of protest.

Government officials, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, circulated the proposal to education officials representing India's 25 states during an October conference. The proposal recommended that study of the Vedas and Upanishads, Hindu scriptures, become mandatory in public schools. The government withdrew it entirely when officials from 10 states stormed out of the conference after it opened with a prayer to the Hindu goddess Saraswati.

Government officials later admitted they had made a mistake in unveiling the proposal. The education conference, they said, was designed to find ways to boost India's literacy rate, which is currently about 50 percent, and make sure more children go to school. The controversy over religion, they said, had distracted from these goals.