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RELIGIOUS STRIFE
Warns Against Increased
North Ireland Violence
LONDONDERRY,
Northern * Ireland (NC) —
Violence injuring more than
200 persons erupted at the
end of a march to demand
civil rights for Catholics in
Northern Ireland and brought
a government decision to
order a massive police
buildup.
After a three-hour
emergency meeting (Jan. 6),
the Northern Irish cabinet
authorized Home Minister
William Long to call up
members of the special
constabulary in whatever
numbers he considers
necessary to maintain law and
order throughout the six
counties of Northern Ireland.
The government, however,
refused to issue a blanket ban
on all political parades and
demonstrations.
The day after the cabinet
meeting (Jan. 7), civil rights
leaders continued to plan for
a giant rally for Jan. 11 in
DUBLIN (NC) -
Proportionally, Ireland has
more Catholic missionaries
serving in other countries
than any other na L ion,
according to a survey
published here.
With a population of
about 2.9 million, Ireland has
7,085 missionaries serving
overseas. The figure,
published by the Missionary
Service Center, is 568 more
than the 6,517 shown by the
center’s first survey in 1965.
Of Ireland’s population,
about 2.7 million are
Catholics.
The United States, with a
total population of more than
200 million, of whom about
47.4 million are Catholics,
had 9,655 missionaries
serving overseas as of Jan. 1,
1968.
Newry, a city 33 miles from
Belfast, the capital of
Northern Ireland.
Several thousand
demonstrators were expected
to march through Newry in a
major test of the
government’s new policy.
The violence came at the
end (Jan. 4) of a four-day
72-mile march from Belfast
to Londonderry. Organized
by People’s Democracy, a
student group at Queen’s
University in Belfast, the
march was a protest against
discrimination against
Catholics in Northern Ireland
and a demand for the
principle of “one man, one
vote” in local elections.
The same day (Jan. 5)
Home Minister Long
promised the civil rights
group “an active and
immediate investigation” of
police behavior.
Northern Ireland’s Prime
Minister Terence O’Neill,
however, in a statement
The figures for both
countries include priests,
Brothers, Sisters and lay
people.
For Ireland, the
breakdown is 2,797 priests,
486 Brothers, 3,547 Sisters
and 255 lay people.
The geogrpahical
distribution of Irish foreign
missionaires is: Africa, 4,473;
Asia and Oceania, 2,027; and
the Americas, 585.
Before the outbreak of its
civil war with the secessionist
state of Biafra, Nigeria had
the greatest number of Irish
foreign missionaries: 1,499.
The survey showed that
the Holy Ghost Fathers and
the Society of St. Columban
have the greatest number of
missionaries serving overseas,
572 members each.
issued in Belfast (Jan. 5),
said: “Unless these warring
minorities rapidly return to
their senses, we will have to
consider a further
reinforcement of the regular
police.”
“It is also time,” he added,
“certain students returned to
their studies, for which they
have the support of
the taxpayer and learn a little
more about the nature of our
society before displaying
again such arrogance toward
those who have built up the
facilities they enjoy.”
Religious differences have
been a source of trouble in
Northern Ireland since
Ireland was partitioned in
1922. Catholics number
about one-third of Northern
Ireland’s total population of
1.5 million.
In April, 1967, a news
team of the London Times
investigated charges of
discrimination in Northern
Ireland and reported they
found overwhelming evidence
for them. Earlier a
non-Catholic Labor Party
group from the British House
of Commons urged Prime
Minister Harold Wilson to
investigate anti-Catholic
discrimination in Northern
Ireland. The MPs had made a
trip to Northern Ireland and
reported that Catholics here
were not getting fair
treatment with regard to
housing, the law, local
government and government
appointments.
The Council of Europe’s
human rights commission at
Strasbourg, France, recently
asked Britain for its
observations on a complaint
of discrimination by Catholic
residents of Northern Ireland.
After receiving a report from
the British government, the
commission will decide
whether to investigate the
matter.
in twmnx j v < - &
The Council of Europe is
an international organization
whose members are the
governments of 18 countries,
including Britain.
Membership is limited to
European states that “accept
the principles of the rule of
law and of the enjoyment of
all persons within (their)
jurisdiction of human rights
and fundamental freedoms.”
PROPORTIONALLY
Most Missioners
Come From Eire
NATIVITY FIRST COMMUNION - Members of First Holy Communion Class of Nativity of Our
Lord Church, Savannah, pose with teachers and Father William Simmons, associate pastor.
Children received Communion on Saturday, January 4th. (Pollack and Daly Photo)
Albany
The Southern Cross, January 9, 1969 — PAGE 3
POPE SA YS
Peace—"Soul
Of The World’
ps q
■ RtftRtHCE
$1,000 TOWARDS NEW BUS - Savannah’s St. James Home & School Association is presently
jngaged in a drive to purchase a new school bus by saving S & H Green Stamps. Students held
several contests and through their efforts a check for $1,000 was recently presented the school by
the S & H Trading Stamp Co. The school is now engaged in Part II for the second $1,000. Price of
the bus will be approximately $6,000. In photo Father John Cuddy, pastor, receives check from S
& H representative Dixon Hayes. Looking on (1. to r.) are: Mrs. Thomas O. Fultz, president of the
Home & School; Mrs. John Higgins, Stamp Committee chairman and Mother David Marie, I.H.M.,
school principal. (Photo by Bob Ward)
FOLLOWING BRAZIL COUP
US Missionary Priests
Tell Of Arrests By Army
BY R. J. BYRNE
ST. LOUIS (NC) - Two
U.S. missionary priests, safely
returned here after 10 days in
a Recife, Brazil, jail, detailed
the criticism of how the
take-over of the government
by the Brazilian army which
led to their arrests.
Although taken into
custody on charges of
“subversive agitation,” they
said they have no regrets.
The elder of the
missionaries, Father Darrell
Rupiper, O.M.I., said: “We
were forced to leave because
we told the truth.”
The personal drama of
Father Rupiper, 31, of
Carroll, Iowa, and Father
Peter Grams, 28, of St. Louis,
began when the Brazilian
military closed the Brazilian
Congress and suspended the
constitution on Dec. 15.
The next day Fathers
Rupiper and Grams criticized
the suspending of
constitutional freedoms-of
speech, meeting, habeas
corpus, and legal
representation-in the weekly
bulletin of their parish, Christ
the Redeemer church, in
Jordao, a suburb of Recife,
northeastern Brazil.
The criticism was repeated
from the pulpit at Sunday
Masses, Father Grams said,
and apparently was relayed to
the military authorities.
“At 10 o’clock that night,
about 30 men in six cars
surrounded the church. One
of our parishioners who was
just leaving the church
returned and told us six
armed men were at the door,
waiting for us. We turned off
the lights, walked out
through the church, and they
stopped us.”
Father Grams, whose \
father is a vice president of
the Pulitzer Publishing
Company, publishers of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said
their cell was a dark,
windowless room in the
downtown police station. For
the first three days, the two
were not allowed to speak to
each other and were
interviewed separately. Then
the American consul came to
the jail and arranged for the
priests to have beds.
After 10 days they were
given a choice, the priests
related-leave the country
voluntarily or stay and face a
military court on charges of
“subversive agitation.”
“We were told that if we
decided to face trail, the
questioning would continue
30 days, after which we
would await our turn for a
military court with a
two-year backlog of cases,”
Father Rupiper said. “And
they told us we would be
convicted.”
At 10 p.m. Christmas
night, they were allowed to
leave Brazil voluntarily.
“They said it was our
Christmas present,” Father
Grams reported.
Only a few hours before
their release, another Oblate
missionary, Father Giles
Wagner, O.M.I., of Pierce
City, Mo, fled from Recife
fearing arrest. Father Wagner
had written an article in the
same parish bulletin on
conscientious objection to
entering the Brazilian armed
services.
Father Rupiper, the pastor
of the parish, said: “Anyone
who speaks out on social
justice in Brazil is labeled as a
subversive agitator. All types
of fear tactics are used to
maintain the people in their
slavery.”
One instance he knew of
personally involved a student
who was arrested, beaten and
then released. He was injured
sufficiently to require
hospitalization, the priest
said.
“He was considered an
agitator only for asking for
school system reforms,” he
said.
Father Rupiper said
despite his arrest he has no
regrets over his actions, and
feels the criticism of the
military regime was justified.
Father Grams is resting at
the home of his parents in
suburban Glendale. Father
Rupiper stayed at an Oblate
house in nearby Belleville,
Ill., before returning to his
parents in Iowa. Father
Wagner was reported to be at
the headquarters of the
Oblates’ central province, in
Minnesota.
VATICAN CITY (NC) -
Pope Paul VI, on the second
yearly Day of Peace, which
he himself instituted a year
ago, described peace as “the
soul of the world, which is on
its way toward an organic and
living unification.”
Without naming Vietnam
or Nigeria, or the violence at
airports in Athens and Beirut,
Pope Paul deplored “the
conflicts still in progress at
certain points of the earth
and the recent violent
episodes of guerrilla warfare,
terrorism and reprisal.”
Such warfare and violence
“send a shudder through the
entire body of mankind,” he
declared. He added the hope
that such moral revulsion
might provoke “broad and
wholesome repentance”
rather than pessimism.
The Pope was speaking at
a midnight Mass ushering in
the New Year. He celebrated
Mass in the Roman church
known as “Ara Coeli” and
spoke on the New Year’s Day
the day he had proclaimed as
a Day of Peace the year
before in the hope that his
idea would be taken up by
governments and
organizations throughout the
world.
His own view of the
prospects of peace seemed to
be clearly optimistic. He said:
“Peace is in the process of
coming to be. It proceeds by
stages. It has its history.
Peace and history should in
the end be identified.”
He appealed for a
settlement of disputes “no
longer by trials of murderous
brute force, blind and ruinous
as it is, but through rational
procedures that can protect
the rights, interests and honor
of human communities.” He
acknowledged that that “May
well entail some sacrifice on
both sides, but no sacrifice of
human lives.”
He warned against the
temptation “to believe that
heroism and violence are
quivalent.”
After asserting that respect
for the rights of man leads to
peace, just as peace favors
such respect, he called peace
and man “co-relative terms”
that “demand each other and
complete each other.”
He lamented “the
non-fulfillment of a large part
of the rights which man now
should enjoy” and argued
that without such fulfillment
man cannot achieve
self-fulfillment.
“Man’s evolution toward
his fullness is still in nee' 1 of
enormous development, and
as long as this development
has not reached its adequate
measure, we will not have
true peace in the world. We
venture to repeat what we
have declared elsewhere: the
development of peoples is
today the new name of
peace.”
And he declared: “Peace
today acquires a universal
meaning, longs to embrace
the whole of mankind. Any
local and partial violation of
its civilized dominion wounds
the general sensivility of the
world, because now peace
means the soul of the world,
which is on its way toward an
organic and living
unification.”
PHILIP BATASTINI
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