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The Southern Cross DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER Vol. 55 No. 44 Thursday, December 12,1974 Single Copy Price — 15 Cents MOTHER SETON, OLIVER PLUNKETT English - Speaking Saints to be Named BLESSED ELIZABETH BAYLEY SETON, founder whose names will be formally proposed Dec. 12 for of the American Sisters of Charity, is among several canonization during the Holy Year. (NC Photos) POPE PAUL TO JURISTS Sees Wider Rights for Women BY JAMES C. O’NEILL VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul VI told the Italian Union of Catholic Women Jurists that the Church “is directly interested” in all questions involving women’s role in today’s changing society. The Pope received the group of Catholic women who hold office in Italy as regional or local judges, or are private lawyers, on Dec. 7. The group held its convention in Rome this year to discuss woman in Italian society today. Pointing out that he has established a special Vatican commission to study the role of women in Church and society, the Pope noted that Italy moved “in a rather short period of time” from an agricultural to an industrialized society. Pope Paul noted that today’s women are enjoying more equality in education as well as “a growing emancipation in relation to men and a new concept and interpretation of their roles as wives, mothers, daughters and sisters.” He noted: “They have access in an ever-increasing measure, on ever-wider levels of specialization, to the professional fields. There is also an accentuated tendency to prefer non-domestic areas of work.” Not all these developments are negative, he added, “and in this sense women of today and of tomorrow perhaps may more easily develop the possibilities of their fullness of energies.” Even when some of the present experiences being undergone by women are undesirable, he said, “they may prove useful later if in society women will affirm the sound principles which are universally known so as to attain a new balance in domestic and social life.” Explaining his point further, Pope Paul declared: “The real problem consists in the recognition of, respect for and, where necessary, the restoration of these principles which constitute the irreplaceable values in the development of an advanced people.” Pope Paul said these principles involve “the functional differentiation of women through natural identity from that of men, hence the originality of her very being, of her psychology, of her human and Christian vocation.” There is also woman’s dignity, the Pope continued, “which cannot be debased as it often happens today by morals, work and through indiscriminate promiscuity, publications and entertainment. would add that the primacy through which women hold sway in all the human sphere is where they most directly encounter the problems of life, or suffering, of assistance and, above all, of motherhood.” VATICAN CITY (NC) - The 1975 Holy Year is expected to take on a strong American ’ hue with the canonization of the first native-born American to be proposed to the world’s Catholics as a model and an intercessor, Mother Elizabeth Bayley Seton. Irish Catholics are also expected to get a boost with the canonization of Oliver Plunket, archbishop of Armagh, who was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1681. He was the last Catholic to die for his faith at Tyburn, the place of execution in London where many English Catholics were martyred. Although Ireland is called the Island of Saints, historians say no Irish person has been canonized since the 13th century, when the 12th-century archbishop of Dublin, Lawrence O’Toole, was declared a saint. Pope Paul VI summoned a special consistory here Dec. 12 to announce some new saints to be canonized and those to be beatified in the Roman Holy Year. However not all the persons to be canonized during the Holy Year were necessarily announced at the Dec. 12 consistory. The Vatican announced Dec. 9 that Pope Paul had presided over a meeting of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes at which cures attributed to the intercession of five persons were declared to be beyond natural explanation and hence miraculous. This approbation was a prelude to the canonization of three: Blessed Mother Seton, Blessed Oliver Plunket and Blessed Vicenza Maria Lopez Vicuna, a Spanish woman who founded the Daughters of Mary Immaculate and died in 1890. It is a prelude to the beatification of two others: Bishop Charles de Mazenod, a 19th-century Frenchman who founded the missionary congregation of Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and Mother Maria Teresa Ledochowska, a Polish noblewoman who founded the Sisterhood of St. Peter Claver for African Missions in 1894. Earlier this year Pope Paul stated publicly that he hoped Cardinal John Henry Newman would be beatified during the Holy Year. Not only for English Catholics but for English-speaking Catholics everywhere, the beatification of Cardinal Newman would make Holy Year a time to remember. Newman was the Church of England’s outstanding theologian when he entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and is still widely read for the depth of his thought and the elegance of his style. A canonization widely expected during Holy Year but not presaged by the Dec. 9 meeting of the Congregation of Saints’ Causes is that of Blessed John Nepomucene Neumann, first bishop of Philadelphia. The postulator for the cause of Blessed John Neumann, Father Nicolo Ferrante of the Redemptorists, told NC News Service that a final miracle attributed to the bishop of Philadelphia is still under examination by the congregation’s medical experts. He said this meant that Blessed John Neumann would not be among those named during the Dec. 12 consistory. However he said the approval of the miracle might come through in a short time. Another consistory dealing with the same subject of canonizations for Holy Year might be held by Pope Paul in the near future, he said. Mother Seton was bom Elizabeth Bayley in New York in 1774 of a distinguished Protestant family. She married William Magee Seton at the age of 19, and was a widow at 29. The Christian charity shown her by the Italian Catholic family that sheltered her husband, her children and herself during his last illness gave her a deep interest in the Catholic faith. She entered the Catholic Church in 1805. By the time of her death less than 16 years later, at the age of 46, she had founded the American Sisters of Charity and laid the foundation of the American Catholic parochial school system. In that time she had kept her children with her and devoted herself to their education. She was beatified by Pope John XXIII on March 17,1963. Blessed John Nepomucene Neumann was bom in 1811 in what now is Czechoslovakia. He arrived in the United States as a seminarian with only the clothes on his back and a dollar in (Continued on Page 2) - . INSIDE STORY Clemency Program .....Pg. 2 'Know Your Faith’ Pg. 5 Catholic Communications Pg. 7 Readers Reply Pg. 8 4 IT IS ANTICIPATED in some quarters that Blessed John Neumann, a former Bishop of Philadelphia will also be proposed for canonization during the Holy Year. (NC Photos) & HEADLINE ft m HOPSCOTCH VJ Terrorism Condemned BUENOS AIRES (NC) - The bishops of Argentina have condemned terrorist activities in the country but blamed the troubles on a moral crisis affecting all of society. Three leftist guerrilla groups, a rightist paramilitary organization and government forces have been locked in a mini-civil war for almost two years. Almost 200 persons have been killed in the violence this year. “These conditions and facts amount to a prolonged moral crisis, and they certainly challenge God’s wrath and thwart His peace,” the Argentine Bishops’ Conference said. The widespread terrorism, the bishops added, “will never succeed in establishing a new political order.” Nuclear Weapons Treaty UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. (NC) -- A papal representative, arguing that man’s future on earth “is literally at stake,” has pleaded for wider government adherence to the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Jesuit Father John Lucal, a member of the Holy See’s observer mission at the United Nations, told the general assembly’s political and security committee that while the Vatican rejects no “valid and hopeful” approach to the problem of nuclear armaments, as a party to the treaty on non-proliferation it attaches special importance to it “as a very constructive approach to the problem.” Siamese Twins Baptised PHILADELPHIA (NC) - Clara and Alta Rodriguez, the 15-month-old Siamese twin girls from the Dominican Republic who were separated in a historic operation at Children’s Hopsital here in September, were welcomed into the Catholic Church in baptismal ceremonies at the hospital. The two infants were baptized conditionally because an emergency Baptism was performed just after they were born. They had eight Official godparents, including two physicians who were part of the operating team that separted the two girls. American Jesuits Elected ROME (NC) -- Two American Jesuits have been elected to key working committees for the extraordinary general congregation of the Society of Jesus. Father Michael Buckley, a theology professor at Rome’s Gregorian University, was elected to serve on the committee on the state of the society. Father Robert Mitchell, a former provincial superior of the Jesuits’ New York province, was elected to the screening committee for the nearly 80 postulata, or action proposals, drawn up from 1,020 papers submitted by Jesuits throughout the world.