In the company of priests

{ "b" : "Seminary Boy," , "cite" : "by John Cornwell, Fourth Estate, €23.50."}

{ "b" : "Seminary Boy," , "cite" : "by John Cornwell, Fourth Estate, €23.50."}

These days it is football teams that track children before they reach their teens, carefully selecting specimens with potential and virtually kidnapping them from ordinary life in the knowledge that, while many will fall by the wayside, the wastage is worth it to wind up with a chosen few.

Few poor parents can resist the lure of future money ...