Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Cross
DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER
Vol. 54 No. 28
Thursday, August 16,1973
Single Copy Price — 12 Cents
U.S. CATHOLIC AID SOUGHT
Famine, Death Face
6,000,000 in Africa
MALNUTRITION IN KENYA - Famine and
drought have made news in the Sahelian zone of Africa
where Catholic Relief Services has gone to the aid of
victims, but malnutrition is also a problem in Kenya.
ARRESTED ON PICKET LINE
At the mission station of Ortum, in the diocese of
Eldoret, a Holy Rosary Sister and her assistant help a
starving boy whose body has been shriveled to skeletal
form. (NC Photo)
66
Best Jail I’ve Ever Been in
99
BY GERARD E. SHERRY
CARRUTHERS, Calif. (NC) - It was
a hot muggy day in the San Joaquin
Valley. The lady was being escorted by
a sheriff’s deputy to meet the visitor.
She was slightly bent as she walked with
the aid of a metal seat cane. Despite the
wide brimmed straw hat and the drab,
olive-green jailhouse dress, she had an
air of proud dignity - but this was not
surprising, for she was the matriarch of
the apostolate to the poor and the
INSIDE STORY
Bainbridge Parish
Pg. 2
"Maude”
Pg. 4
"Know Your Faith”
> Pg« 5
Sisters of Mercy
Pg. 7
oppressed -- she was Dorothy Day.
Being jailed for her convictions is
nothing new to the 76-year-old pacifist
and founder of the Catholic Worker
Movement. And she was delighted with
this particular jail - Fresno County
Industrial Farm.
“It’s almost like a motel,” she said.
“They have been very good to us. Apart
from a few incidents of bad temper on
the part of a couple of guards, they’ve
treated us well. I think it’s the best jail
I’ve ever been in.”
Miss Day was arrested Aug. 1 as she
gave witness on the picket line at a
Fresno county farm struck by the
United Farm Workers Union. She had
come out from her Catholic Worker
headquarters in New York state, to heed
the call of Cesar Chavez, UFWU leader,
for religious leaders to give support for
his struggle against the Teamsters
Union. Several hours after her arrival in
Fresno, she was on the picket line.
Several minutes later she was on her
way to jail.
She was charged, as were some 400
others that day, with violating court
injunctions which limited the number of
pickets to one per 100 feet.
“It is an unjust injunction,” she said,
“which deprives the strikers of their
constitutional rights. It favors the
growers and discriminates against those
who do not have the political influence
or economic power in this valley.”
Miss Day was among a group of
religious leaders and striking farm
workers housed at the industrial farm
because the county jail in Fresno was
full. A Youth Authority camp in the
county is also being used to house some
of the overflow.
Solidarity with the farm workers was
so complete that Miss Day, along with
the jailed priests, seminarians, and nuns,
refused to accept release on bail or
otherwise, unless all those arrested on
the picket line were released. And to
emphasize this solidarity, most joined in
a fast. Her companions had a diet of
milk, Kool Aid, or water for more than
a week. A UFWU doctor who daily
visits the jails, has insisted on the
addition of vitamins.
Miss Day said the main reason she
was staying in jail was that “when
you’re working with a group of strikers,
you take orders. I have joined them in
their cause and as long as they are
imprisoned I will stay with them.”
“I think Cesar Chavez and his United
Farm Workers Union is the most
important thing that has happened to
the U.S. labor movement,” she said.
“The working poor in the fields have
banded together through free choice to
(Continued on Page 7)
“ . . .without immediate and
large-scale assistance some six million
people will die” in six West African
nations suffering from the effects of a
five-year drought, according to a letter
sent to U.S. Bishops by Brother Joseph
M. Davis, S.M., Executive Director of
the National Office for Black Catholics
(NOBC). There are 25 million people in
the affected nations.
The letter expressed pleasure over
steps already taken by Catholic Relief
Services (CRS), overseas aid agency of
U.S. Catholics, but noted that “ . . .even
more help is needed. It is really
necessary that wherever communities of
concern exist, they be motivated to
assist in staving off this tragedy.”
Brother Davis asked the bishops to bring
“this special and urgent concern” to the
people of their dioceses and urged that
assistance in the form of contributions
be sent to WEST AFRICAN FAMINE
RELIEF FUND, CATHOLIC RELIEF
SERVICES, 350 FIFTH AVENUE,
NEW YORK, N. Y. 10001.
Documentation accompanying
Brother Davis’ letter declares that it is
estimated that more than one third of
the livestock in the stricken area of
approximately 965,000 square miles
have perished, and that the remainder
have exhausted available grazing land
and water and are succumbing to famine
related diseases.
Farmers are unable to plant this
season’s crops due to the drought. Grain
reserves and seed supplies are gone in
most areas. Many farmers have been
forced to consume their crop seed in
order to stay alive.
In addition epidemic outbreaks have
followed in the wake of famine-induced
weakness - meningitis in Chad, a
cholera flare-up in Senegal and
outbreaks of measles in Mali and Niger.
According to Catholic Relief Services
(CRS) the southern areas of the
drought-stricken belt began to receive
rain in June. If the rains continue and
are adequate, says CRS, seeds now being
planted will mature and crops will be
ready for harvest this fall. The relief
agency warns, however, that “at best, it
will be October before the major crops
are available.
Raymond Panczyk, program director
for CRS in Senegal, and Patrick Lyons,
program director for Cameroons, both of
whom made on-the-spot surveys for the
CRS New York office, estimate it will
take a minimum of $1 million just to
meet the most urgent needs “and lay
the basis for the kind of continuing
effort” needed to offset the effect of
future droughts in the three nations in
which CRS has on-going programs.
Those countries are Senegal, Mauretania
and Upper Volta.
Panczyk and Lyons reported that the
bishops and priests in the stricken area
indicated that CRS can meet urgent and
unmet needs of the drought and famine
victims by providing supplemental
specialized foods, by furnishing
clothing, especially children’s clothing,
and through contributions of basic
medicines, including vitamins, malaria
suppressants and broad-spectrum
antibiotics.
According to a CRS spokesman, his
organization’s response thus far “has
necessarily been limited since it has
been shaped by the funds available for
this purpose.” He listed the following
steps CRS has already taken:
a) authorized cash grants of $10,000
each to its program directors in Senegal
and Upper Volta for on-the-spot use in
the procurement of supplemental foods
and medicines;
b) contributed $25,000 to the fund
set up by a Vatican relief agency for the
purchase of seeds;
c) purchased in Ghana, 30 tons of
sorghum at a cost of $9,000 for
shipment to the northern part of that
country where it is now being
distributed to drought victims under the
supervision of the White Fathers;
d) dispatched a shipment of millet
from the U.S. to Upper Volta, and
shipments of clothing and medical
supplies valued at $54,000 from east
coast ports to Dakar and Abidjan for
distribution in Senegal, Mauritania and
Upper Volta;
e) diverted from its on-going relief
and development programs in Senegal
and Mauretania for distribution to
victims of the drought 129 tons of CSM
(valued at $43,425) which was
discharged from the vessel Subin River
at Dakar on August 1st;
f) sent air shipments of vitamins and
antibiotics from JFK airport, New York
on August 11th.
The total CRS contribution to date
amounts to $225,264, but much more is
urgently needed, the CRS spokesman
said.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN CATHOLIC PRESS ~ John Markwalter, a
veteran member of the Catholic press since 1948, recently marked the
completion of twenty-five years work in the Catholic press field in
Georgia. Here he gives advice to Angie Lee on how to paste up a
SOUTHERN CROSS page at the newspaper’s publication office in
Waynesboro. Miss Lee takes charge each week of all the ads that appear in
the SOUTHERN CROSS and is responsible for cutting and pasting the
news stories as they come off the type-setting machines. Markwalter
joined the staff of the CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION
BULLETIN in 1948. Following a two-year stint in the U.S. Army
(1950-52) he was named Editor of THE BULLETIN and served in this
post until 1962 when the GEORGIA BULLETIN began publishing for the
Archdiocese of Atlanta. Markwalter was then named managing editor of
THE SOUTHERN CROSS.
HEADLINE HP
HOPSCOTCH ■' t ■
Israeli Police Scored
HAIFA, Israel (NC) - The Catholic archbishop of Galilee charged that Israeli police
committed an act of “desecration” when they entered a church in the village of Ikrit
and arrested 42 former residents of the village. The Christian villagers were protesting
the government’s refusal to allow them to return to the village on the Lebanese border.
“We consider this act one of religious persecution,” said Archbishop Joseph Raya in a
telegram to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Ikrit has been uninhabited since 1948.
The government defends its action by citing the frequent battles with guerrillas along
the border.
"Maude” Stirs Protest
WASHINGTON (NC) - The decision to show returns of the two abortion segments
of the television comedy series “Maude” is a “breach of good faith” on the part of the
CBS network, according to Bishop James S. Rausch, general secretary of the U.S.
Catholic Conference. “The CBS action,” Bishop Rausch said, “is irresponsible and
gratuitous,” and he called for protests against the action. Bishop Rausch said the
segments “advocate abortion,” and he complained that they are broadcast “in a
situation comedy format aired at prime viewing hours when children are a large part of
the audience.”