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f Vol. 44, No. 32 10c Per Copy — $5 A Year WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF THE DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH Benedictine Military School SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1964 FATHER JOHN CUDDY, Diocesan Superintendent of Schools was the fourth Speaker in a series entitled "Second Vatican Council - Reform and Reunion.” He is shown above at rostrum. At left in photo is Bishop McDonough. At right is Father William V. Coleman, program moderator. Prophecies Must Be Fulfilled” School Superintendent Views Unity Prospects SAVANNAH — The Rev. John Cuddy, Diocesan Superintendent of Schools was the speaker for the fourth in a series of six lectures entitled "Second Vati can Council — Reform and /Reunion,” delivered at Cathe dral Day School Auditorium Thursday evening, Feb. 13. Topic of his talk was "The Prospect of Reunion.” Father Cuddy emphasized that Christ prophesied ' ‘other Sheep I have who are not of this fold. Them also I must bring and there shall be one flock and one shepherd,” and prayed the night before He died, "That they all may be one, Fa ther. As Thou in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one r in us.” "Jesus is God,” he said, "His prophecies must be fulfilled; His prayers must be an swered.” He noted that althought there are 900,000,000 Christians in ' the world, "they are not all in one flock.” The differences which sepa rate the various Christian bod ies are immense, he said, and if they were "just minor dis agreements, disunity would be blasphemy.” Declaring that there is hope that "our Church and the other Churches will . . . reconcile our differences,” the Savannah educator said, "The day has ended when Christians took a their divisions for granted. We now view them as an unbearable disgrace, a heavy cross. But we love Our Lord too much to pretend to believe something we do not believe simply to acquire a sur face unity. We love Our Lord Lecture By Msgr.McDonald February 27 SAVANNAH — Right Rev erend Monsignor Andrew J. McDonald, Chancellor of the Diocese of Savannah and pas tor of the church of the Most Blessed Sacrament, will de liver the last in the series of lectures on "Reform and Reunion Among Christians.” The lecture, sponsored by the Diocese of Savannah, will be held Thursday evening, February 27th, at 8 p.m. in the Cathedral School Au ditorium. Monsignor McDonald’s subject will be "The Church and Matrimony.” too much to pretend that it doesn’t matter what we be lieve simply to acquire the ap pearance of unity. Such unity would be a farce harder to bear than our present dis unity. "We really have no choice but to leave the entire matter in Our Lord’s wounded hands. He can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He can help us see what we cannot now see. . . He can use our love for Him and, in Him for one another, to make all of us so much like Him that we shall begin to think as He would think, to do as He would do, to love as He would love. "When that day arrives, and only then, will full unity among Christians be a reality, no long er a dream.” Father Cuddy said there is almost no end to what indivi duals can do, personally, to fur ther Christian unity. "To begin with, we must ad mit to ourselves that those who disagree with us are not our enemies, but our brothers in Christ. . . In our love for one another we learn not mere ly to show our friends what we believe; but since friendship invites an exchange, we develop a deep desire to understand what our friends believe. To sit down together as friends to probe, ever more deeply, into the Word of God—this is our privilege today.” Christians must really know what they beleive before they can share ideas, he said, de ploring the "superficial know ledge” of many Catholics whose inability to distinguish between essentials and non-essentials in their religion, leads them to "misrepresent their Faith both by word and action.” (Continued on Page 2) AS LENTEN SEASON BEGAN—In the Pope’s private chapel, Luigi Cardinal Traglia, (left) Pro-Vicar General of Rome, proceeds to place the mark of ashes upon the fore head of Pope Paul VI on Ash Wednesday. On that day the Holy Father spoke to thousands in a general audience at the Vatican’s Hall of Benedictions. He also visited the Church of Santa Sabina, the first of a series of processions to the Roman churches during Lent.— (NC Photos) Apostolic Delegate To Officiate At Dedication SAVANNAH—His Excellency, The Most Reverend EgidioVag- nozzi, Ph.D., S.T.D., J.C.D., Apostolic Delegate to the United States will officiate at the formal dedication of the new Sacred Heart Priory and Benedictine Military School, Thursday, April 30th. The announcement was made in a joint statement by His Ex cellency, Bishop Thomas J. Mc Donough and the Very Rev. Bede Lightner, O.S.B., Prior of the Savannah Benedictine Com munity, issued at the Savannah Chancery last Monday. Dedication exercises will be gin at 10:30 a.m. and will be followed by an outdoor Solemn Pontifical Mass at the school plaza. Archbishop Vagnozzi will be the celebrant. Music for both the dedication ceremonies and the Mass will be provided by a city-wide choir under the di rection of Mr. J. Harry Persse. A reception for Archbishop Vagnozzi, planned for 8:00 p.m., will feature a musical program by the Choral Group of St. Vin cent’s Academy, under the direction of Mrs. Joseph C. Schreck. Dignitaries in attendance will include Bishops from the Pro vince of Atlanta, which em braces the States of North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, and Abbots of the MOST REVEREND EGIDIO VAGNOZZI APOSTOLIC DELEGATE tion. Detailed arrangements for the reception of the Apostolic Delegate and visiting dignatar- ies, and for the dedication pro gram have not yet been com pleted and will be made public at a later date. The new Benedictine fa cilities are located at Seawright Drive and Cornell Avenue, on a 111 acre tract, formerly part of Chatham County’s old ‘‘Brown Farm.” Ground for the $1,500,000 complex of buildings was brok en Feb. 11, 1963 and classes began Sept. 20th. Buildings in clude a Priory and Chapel for the Benedictine Community, Academic building, Cafetorium, and Gymnasium. School facili ties can accommodate 600 stu dents. Architects for the new Pri ory and School were the Savan nah firm of Thomas, Driscoll and Hutton. Whaley and Minter Construction Company of Brunswick, were the contrac tors. Although Benedictine Mili tary School dates only from 1902, Priests of the Order of St. Benedict have labored in Geor gia since 1871 when a group of French Benedictines, led by Father Gabriel Bergier O.S.B. came to Savannah, where they built the chapel at Isle of Hope, which still serves as a Mission of St. James Parish. In 1885 they affiliated with the monks of Belmont Abbey, N. C. and opened Benedictine College (now Benedictine Mili tary School) Sept. 29, 1902. The first school was located on the southside of 32nd Street between Lincoln and Habersham. On June 16, 1905, the late Bishop Benjamin J. Keiley offi ciated at the dedication of the building at 34th and Bull Streets, which served as Benedictine Military School until last Sep tember. A decree from the Holy See established the Savannah Com munity as an independent Pri ory in June of 1961 and The Very Rev. Bede Lightner was elected its first Prior in September of the same year. Priests presently residing at Sacred Heart Priory and teach ing at the new school are: Very Rev. Bede Lightner, O.S.B., Prior; Rev Aloysium Wacht- er O.S.B.; Rev. Andrew Doris, O. S.B.; Rev. Brendan Dooley, O.S.B.; Rev. Christopher Jo hann, O.S.B., School Principal; Rev. Damian Muldowney, O.S.B.; Rev. Luke Bain,O.S.B.; Rev. Peter Trizzino, O.S.B.; Rev. Stephen Dowd, O.S.B.; Rev. Terrence Kernan O.S.B., pas tor of Sacred Heart Church; and Rev. Timothy Flaherty O.S.B. Also residing at the Priory are Frater Paschal Morlino, O.S.B.; Bro. Charles Leonard, Oblate Novice. Lent Recalls Shortness Of Life, Pope Reminds VATICAN CITY (NC)—Pope Paul VI told the thousands at his general audience on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 12) that the significance of the ceremony of the ashes—a reminder of the shortness of a man’s life—is unwelcome to many because it is * ‘very striking, almost terri fying.” Speaking in the Vatican’s Hall of Benedictions, the Pope said that the Ash Wednesday cere monies recall * ‘the most seri ous aspect of our religion. . . the penitential aspect, the sad, severe and pessimistic as pect.” Pope Paul noted that this in sistence on man’s mortality ‘‘drive many souls away from the Faith and from the Church, especially the young and the children of our time who want joy, beauty and the enjoyment of life.” He said that instead ‘‘Chris tianity is the religion of the Cross, the Church is the teach er of mortification. All this does not conform to the modern spirit which seeks happiness.” But he went on, it is this in sistence on the frailty of life that is ‘‘frankly realistic.” He said that * ‘when the Church speaks to us about the brief ness of our earthly existence it deals with the most common and most obvious experience of our present condition and it deals with it flatly and bluntly, with the undeniable language of the pessimistic philosophers. What is time if not a race to death? What are the goods of this world if not the vanity of vanities?” The Church’s doctrine, the Pope said, ‘‘does not hide,does not minimize the misery of poor human clay. It recognizes, it teaches and it recalls it to our blindness and our vanity.” Through its teaching, he con cluded, the Church leads man beyond his own weakness and through mortification it over comes the misery of life with the result that there is achiev ed ‘ ‘a victory of good over evil, of happiness over sorrow, of holiness over sin and of life over death.” Dispensation In view of the fact that Washington’s birthday, Feb ruary 22nd, is a National Holiday, His Excellency, The Most Reverend Thomas J. McDonough, D.D.J.C.D., has granted a dispensation from the law of fast and absti nence. ACADEMIC BUILDING GYMNASIUM Haiti Ousts All Jesuits; Close Only Seminary Pray For Our Deceased Priests VERY REV. MICHAEL CULLINAN Feb. 23, 1877 Oh God, Who didst give to thy servants by their sacredotnl office, a share in the priest hood of the Apostles, grant, ti'e implore, that they may also be one of their company forever in heaven. Through • Christ Our Lord, Amen. (N.C.W.C. News Service) The Haitian government of President Francois Duvalier | expelled the entire Jesuit com munity from the country and au tomatically forced the closing of the nation’s only major semin ary. The 18 priests and Brothers of the Society of Jesus in Hai ti, all members of the Jesuit province of lower Canada, were forced to fly out of Port-au- Prince, the capital, on Ash Wed nesday ( Feb. 12 ). Two of the Jesuits had been held in prison incommunicado for 12 days pri or to their ouster. The Canadian Jesuits under took the Haitian mission in 1953, after the Holy See requested them to provide the faculty and administration of the Port-au- Prince seminary. With their ex pulsion, the seminary was clos ed. The approximately 60 sem inarians were sent home. The 100-room Jesuit retreat house, which had provided spiritual re treats for some 2,000 persons in the little more than four years since its opening was siezed by the government. The day of the ouster, Cana dian Minister of External Af fairs Paul Martin issued a statement in Ottawa declaring that the Canadian government was "very displeased by the de cision of the Haitian govern ment to expell a mission which has brought so much good to the Haitian people.” Martin said also that "Canada could not be satisfied by the vague allega tions about the activities of the Jesuit mission, which, to our point of view, have in no way been improper.” The foreign minister further noted that he had ordered the charge de’affaires of the Cana dian embassy in Haiti, Charles Bedard, to lodge an official pro test with the Duvalier regime for refusing to allow any Can adian official to see the two Je suits who were held in prison. The two were Father Paul La- ramee, S. J., and Brother Fran - cois-Xavier Ross, S. J., who were arrested at the Port-au- Prince airport Jan. 31 on their return from a trip to Canada. Arrested with them was Father Paul Hamel, S. J., who had gone to the airport to meet them. All were imprisoned in the notorious Fort Diamanche jail. While Father Hamel was released several days later, following a protest by the Can adian charge d’affaires, Father Laramee and Brother Ross were held in jail until they were nustled off to the airport Feb. 12 and ejected from Haiti. According to Father Jean d’- JESUITS OUSTED FROM HAITI BY GOVERNMENT — The Haitian Government of President Duvalier has expel led the entire Jesuit commun ity and closed that nation’s only major seminary. Among the 18 priests and Brothers, all mem bers of the Jesuit province of lower Canada, flown to Mon treal are, from the top, father Paul Hamel, Brother F.X. Ross and Father Paul Laramee.— (NC Photo) Auteuil Richard, S.J., Provin cial of the Jesuits’ lower Can ada province, who went to the Montreal airport to welcome the ousted missionaries home, nei ther Father Laramee nor Bro ther Ross apparently suffered any ill-treatment. The pro vincial said however that the conditions at the Fort Dimanche prison were obviously "de plorable.” The Jesuit community flew out of Port-au-Prince in three different planes. One group of eight flew to Kingston, Jamai ca, then toMiami, NewYorkand Montreal. Another eight flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, New York and Montreal. Two priests flew to Santo Dominigo, capital of the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of His paniola with Haiti. The two— Fathers Paul Chartiez, S. J., and Paul Lachance, S.J.— planned to go by ship to New York and then on to Montreal by train, because 64-year-old fa ther Chartiez has a heart ail ment and prefers not to fly. The superior of the Jesuit community in Haiti, Father Ge rard Goulet, S. J., who was also rector of the seminary, said on arriving in Montreal that the Haitian government is engaged in "deliberate programs of re ligious suppression.” “We were supposed to have been in volved in some political activi ty,” he said. "But that was false, of course—complete non sense.” Among the Jesuits returning here was Father Roy Fenelon, S.J., who had opened the mis sion in Port-au-Prince in 1953. Father Richard, the Pro vincial, said that the 16 Jesuits who had arrived back in Montreal seemed to be in good health. He said however, that they had been "under very severe strain for the past two weeks” and that the "psychol ogical climate prior to that was bad.” The former members of the mission in Haiti will be reassigned after they get an ad equate period of rest, he said. Father Richard noted that meanwhile eight Haitians who are Jesuit scholastics and have been studying in Montreal will continue their studies there. The expulsion of the Jesuits was the latest episode in the long war of attrition the Du valier regime has waged against the Catholic Church in pre dominantly Catholic Haiti. The first major incident was the expulsion of the French- continued on Page 2)