New Delhi, April 26: The Catholic Church is worried that many English-medium schools that are not run by priests or nuns are using the word “convent” in their names, and will ask the government to ban the practice.

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a “convent” is a building in which nuns live together, and a “convent school” is a school run by nuns (usually girls’ or co-ed schools).

Some other dictionaries allow the term to be used for any school run by a Church body — even boys’ schools managed exclusively by priests — a view to which India’s Catholic Church inclines.

In many parts of India, however, the term has virtually come to mean “English-medium school”, and many schools that are not run by the Church claim the “convent” label for themselves.

“We are going to take up the issue with both the Centre and the state governments,’’ Fr Joseph Arackal of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India said.

“There are so many fake convent schools across the country. Some are using the term intentionally as a means to attract parents to enrol their children with them as convent schools have a tradition of goodwill,” he added.

“Some others are using the term unintentionally as they do not know its real meaning. The government should make it clear to all that a ‘convent school’ does not mean any English-medium school. It has to be a school run directly by the Church or by Church-affiliated bodies.’

The Karnataka government had recently issued a circular asking English-medium schools to stop using “convent” in their names if they were not run by Christian priests or nuns. It said hundreds of schools in Karnataka were wrongly proclaiming themselves “convents”.

The circular cited the Oxford English Dictionary to explain that a convent “means a religious community living together under discipline, building occupied by the religious community or school conducted by members of the convent”.

It also quoted Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, to assert that a convent “is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters or nuns or the buildings used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican community”.