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DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 54 No. 23
Thursday, June 7, 1973
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
DAY FOR THE HANDICAPPED - An estimated 25,000 handicapped
children and adults and an equal number of friends and relatives got
together for a day of fun in New York City’s Central Park May 31 at the
area’s second annual “One to One Festival.” The idea began as “Operation
Fun” for mentally retarded and deaf children in the Brooklyn diocese. A
nun and a brother were in charge of recruiting volunteers for the event.
Photos show some of the activities in the park: Top - Boys race for the
finish line in a 50 yard dash in Special Olympics competition; Middle - A
member of The Buckeye Politicians of Columbus, Ohio, dances as he plays
a guitar with a cross on it; Right - A volunteer nuzzles the handicapped
child who is her friend for the day; Far right -- a boy anxiously awaits a
balloon being inflated by a clown. (NC Photos by Thomas N. Lorsung)
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
10th ANNIVERSARY
Memorial Rites for Pope John
BY FATHER LEO E. MCFADDEN
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope John
XXm would have been pleased with the
ceremonies marking the 10th
anniversary of his death.
On June 2, the vigil of the
anniversary, his successor, Pope Paul VI
INSIDE STORY
"Gropes of Wroth"
Pg. 3
"Know Your Faith”
Pg. 5
TV-Movies
Pg. 6
Cook’s Nook
Pg. 8
said a memorial Mass in St. Peter’s
Basilica, the church “good Pope John”
loved so well, and eulogized him as a
“man of the people, full of sensitivity
for his home surroundings.”
In those home surroundings
thousands of tourists and peasants
gathered the following day to jam the
local church in the northern Italian
village of Sotto II Monte as Mass after
Mass was celebrated in honor of its most
celebrated son, Angelo Giuseppe
Roncalli.
In his eulogy in St. Peter’s, Pope Paul
injected a fiery challenge to those who
would use Pope John as an instrument
to speed up or slow down the changes in
the Church or “shatter” papal
authority.
Pope John’s greatness, the present
Pope said, will “be freed, where
necessary, from the distortions that
certain rash and biased interpretations
have attributed to it, as though he had
been the patron of protest, the Pope of
freedom from the bonds of tradition.”
Nor was Pope John “the promoter of
an updating that was indiscriminate and
without predetermined limits, as though
by the authority of his name it were
possible to shatter the very authority
which makes the Church at once one
and universal,” Pope Paul said.
Pope Paul described his immediate
predecessor as a priest of the old school
“full of the most religiously sincere and
devout religious wisdom” who labored
as a papal diplomat “with the wise
astuteness of simplicity and love.”
As a career diplomat, Pope John
served in Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece
and, at the close of the war, became
nuncio to France, where he handled
with tact the accusation against many
French bishops that they cooperated
with the Nazis.
“We bless the memory of this very
dear and venerated Pope, who renewed
the Church and launched ecumenical
dialogue,” Pope Paul said.
Among the thousands reported in
attendance in St. Peter’s and also the
ceremonies the following day at Sotto II
Monte were Pope John’s two living
brothers, Giuseppe and Zaverio.
Peasants came on foot to the village
church bearing flowers from the fields.
In the crypt of St. Peter’s where the
peasant Pope lies buried in a simple
tomb, literally thousands walked past,
pausing for prayer and leaving bouquets
of flowers.
Of those flowers, Pope Paul said in
his eulogy:
“It is more a case of his offering to
us, rather than our offering to him, the
flowers that grow on his tomb.”
2nd TIME IN HISTORY
Protestant Heads Ireland
DUBLIN (NC) -- English-born
Protestant Erskine Childers, 67, has
been elected president of the
predominantly Catholic Irish Republic
in what some observers regard as a
■ esture of conciliation to predominantly
Jljrotestant, violence-ridden Northern
eland.
- Childers who had been deputy prime
minister and minister of health in the
Fienna Fail party government
that was ousted in February elections,
polled a total of 636,161 votes to
537,577 for Thomas O’Higgins, that was
<rasted in February deletions, polled a
total of 636,161 votes to 587,577 for
homas O’Higgins, candidate of the
r iling coalition of the Fine Gael and
J abor parties.
Childers succeeds 90-year-old New
York-born Eamon de Valera, one of the
leaders of the 1916 Easter rebellion that
eventually led to the establishment of
the Irish Republic. Completing his
econd seven-year presidential term at
re end of June, De Valera plans to
move with his 93-year-old poetess wife
to a home for the elderly in the Dublin
suburbs.
Childers, a member of the Church of
Ireland (Anglican), is the second
Protestant president of the Irish
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (NC) -
Bishop James W. Malone of
Youngstown fired off a telegram to
Teamster President Frank Fitzsimmons
to protest the alleged beating of a
Youngstown priest by a Teamster guard
May 30 in the Coachella Valley,
California.
Father John Bank, on leave from the
Youngstown diocese to work with Cesar
Chavez’s United Farm Workers Union
(UFWU) was accosted by a group of
Teamsters while at breakfast with a Wall
Street Journal reporter, Bill Wong, in
Coachella.
The United Farm Workers are on
strike against grape growers who signed
contracts with Teamster locals without
giving the workers the opportunity to
vote.
Father Bank’s injuries, including
multiple fractures of the nose, have
required emergency surgery by a plastic
surgeon and may require additional
surgery, according to his brother, Father
Donald Bank, Catholic Charities
director for the Youngstown diocese.
Mike Falco, a Teamster employee, was
arrested and charged in the beating and
released on $600 bond.
In his telegram, Bishop Malone asked
the Teamsters international president,
Fitzsimmons, for not only a “public
apology” but also asked the union
leader to personally “lead your union to
dialog with the United Farm Workers
Union and call for and support free and
secret ballots for union representation
by farm workers in California, Arizona,
as well as my home state, Ohio.”
Msgr. George G. Higgins, secretary of
research of the United States Catholic
Conference (USCC) has also called on
the Teamsters Union to repudiate the
“unprovoked assault” on Father Bank,
and scored Teamsters officials for
“neither having condemned the assault
nor repudiated the guilty party.” He
added that “their continued silence
raises the suspicion that they approve of
such violent tactics on the part of the
organizers . . .”
In his protest, Bishop Malone noted:
“I am deeply concerned about the
situation because Father Bank is a
peaceful man who had dedicated his life
to the non-violent solution of the
problems of human suffering and
oppression. I know that he will continue
to cry for justice and plead for poor and
oppressed farm workers.
“Personally, I feel that more violence
may be perpetuated against him by men
Republic and the first to be elected.
Douglas Hyde, the republic’s first
president, was nominated to the office
in 1937 without opposition and held it
for one seven-year term.
The repulic’s population of more
than 2.9 million is about 95 percent
Catholic.
“I am deeply honored and humbled
at this magnificent gesture by the Irish
people,” Childers said in a statement
issued after his election had become
certain.
He said that one of his first actions as
president would be to ask the
government’s consent to invite
representatives of the Protestant and
Catholic communities in Northern
Ireland to meet him. Northern Ireland,
with 1 million Protestants and 500,000
Catholics, has been wracked since
August of 1969 by violence stemming
from efforts to end political, economic
and social discrimination against
Catholics.
“I would invite them to visit me,”
Childers said, “so that we could explore
common ground. I will do anything, just
anything to help in that situation.”
What Childers can do is limited by
the republic’s constitution, which makes
who are themselves Teamsters or
employed by the Teamsters union.”
“I support Father Bank in his efforts
to make the needs of farmworkers
better understood. I also support the
attempts to provide them with the
opportunity to vote for the union of
their choice.”
Father John Bank, in a story written
for his diocesan newspaper, the Catholic
Exponent, a few days before the
beating, noted:
“The harvest is just a week away -
over 20 days later than usual due to
cool weather. The strategy of the farm
the presidency a largely ceremonial
office akin to the British monarchy.
The quiet, somewhat distant, slightly
built pipe-smoking Childers has been a
member of the republic’s parliament
since 1938 and has served in various
cabinet posts since 1944. Political
opponents have mimicked his English
accent and debonair manner.
Robert Erskine Childers, father of
the president-elect, was a writer and
English army officer. After service in
the First World War, he went to Dublin
to organize the propaganda campaign
for the Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone)
party, then seeking independence from
Britain. During the brief civil war that
followed the signing of the treaty
partitioning Ireland, he was executed by
Free State authorities, who accepted the
partition, as a Republican rebel.
The president-elect recalled recently
that he went to see his father in prison
the night before he was shot. “He asked
me to promise him I would never be
bitter,” he said. “That promise I have
tried to keep.”
Childers’ father’s death warrant was
signed by Kevin O’Higgins, Free State
home affairs minister and uncle of
Thomas O’Higgins, the defeated
presidential candidate.
Protested
workers is to strike the entire valley,
except the farms of Steinberg and
Larson who renewed their contracts
with the United Farm Workers. While
the strike is on a boycott will begin
across the country. It is a difficult
struggle.
“In this desert land where
temperatures soar to 110 degrees, the
farm workers have drawn the battlelines
with their customary determination.”
It is not a pleasant prospect for the
harvest of grapes from the Coachella
Valley, Father Bank said, “but it’s more
than grapes, people are more perishable
than produce.”
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HEADLINE
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HOPSCOTCH
Religious Ed. Convention
WASHINGTON - The Shoreham Hotel, here, on June 17, 18 and 19 will be the
scene for the gathering of Religious Educators from all areas of the East. The occasion
is the East Coast Conference on Religious Education, which will feature top names in
the Religious Education field. Rev. Joseph Champlin, Rev. Paul Cook, Marriella Frey
MHSH, Dolores Gerkin, James Haas, Monika Hellwig, Rev. John Kirvan, Neil Kluephel,
Rev. Anthony Lobo, Marie McIntyre, Gerard Pottebaum, Francis Regis, SSND, Rev.
James Scharfer, Michael Warren, CFX and Thomas Wichert head the list of speakers
covering topics of particular interest to those in the Religious Education field. The
registration fee is $18.00. Further information can be obtained by writing, East Coast
Conference, P.O. Box 652, Severna Park, Md. 21146.
Josephites Drop Berrigan
BALTIMORE (NC) -- A Josephite superior announced that anti-war activist Father
Philip Berrigan was no longer a member of the order after it was revealed that tne
priest and the former Sister Elizabeth McAlister had been married. The couple, whose
names were constantly linked over the past four years because of their anti-war
activities, announced that they had been married by “mutual consent” since May,
1969. The two announced plans to come back to Baltimore where Father Berrigan was
living at the Josephite houuse since his release from prison several months ago. They
plan to rent a house in the inner city and run a commune for other peace activists.
Urge Bombing Halt
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (NC) -- Jewish, Protestant and Catholic groups have asked a
federal district court here to stop U.S. bombing in Cambodia. The groups went to
court to declare that the defendants - former Defense Secretary Elliot Richardson and
Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans - may not continue to order American forces
into combat in Cambodia in the absence of Congressional authorization.
Irish Disavow Violence
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Irish Protestant and Catholic Church leaders have issued a
joint letter declaring “only a fraction of one percent of the population is actively
engaged in violence” in Northern Ireland. The letter, made available by the Vatican
Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, expressed the religious leaders’
concern over the harm which has been done “to the cause of Christianity throughout
the world by the over-simplification of the nature of the terrible conflict” in their
country.
PRIEST BEATEN
Teamster Violence