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The Southern Cross DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER Vol. 56 No. 18 Thursday, May 1,1975 Single Copy Price — 15 Cents DISPLACED VIETNAMESE Church in U.S. Asked to Help Refugees MASS FOR REFUGEES -- Vietnamese refugees receive Holy Communion in Tent City at Orote Point, Guam. The emergency housing area was set up for the thousands of persons fleeing South Vietnam as Communist attackers closed in on Saigon. (NC Photo) Donalsonville Chapel Dedicated A new Catholic chapel was dedicated at Donalsonville April 20th. The chapel is a double unit, mobile-home type structure which also serves as a mission center. According to Father Conal O’Leary, O.F.M., pastor, the entire Catholic community had been involved for many months in readying the chapel and landscaping the area. “They leveled off the ground and planted grass. They put shrubbery and flowers around the building, painted and hung an identification sign and planned the logistics of a fish fry for an estimated two hundred persons. “Over a long period of time they practiced the hymns to be sung at the dedication, trained teenagers to serve as usheretts, sent out the invitations and marked off spaces for parking cars. It was a total community effort.” Present for the ceremonies were Msgr. Daniel J. Bourke, diocesan comptroller; Fr. John Kenneally, chancellor; Fr. Herbert Wellmeier, pastor of St. Teresa’s, Albany; Fr. John O’Brien, associate pastor of St. Teresa’s; Fr. Frederick Kirschner from Thomasville; Fr. Raymond Govern from Tifton; Fr. Francis Gorman from Moultrie; Fr. Zachary Callahan of the Franciscan Mission Union, New York City and Fr. Mark Sterbenz from St. Benedict’s, Columbus. Also in attendance were all the Sisters from St. Teresa’s school, Albany, and Sister Ruth Hensler, O.S.F., area coordinator for religious education. Not all lay participants in the dedication rites were from Donalsonville, either, said Father O’Leary. “Some came from Iron City, Bainbridge, Blakely, Thomasville, Colquitt, Pensacola and even Mobile,” Fr. O’Leary said. Following the dedication Mass, participants were invited to a fish fry. The bill of fare consisted of various types of fish found in nearby Lake Seminole. IN INDOCHINA WASHINGTON (NC) - The president of the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) has appealed to Catholic dioceses in the United States to help meet the “desperate need” for homes and jobs for refugees from Sbutheast Asia. In a letter to all U.S. bishops, the USCC President, Archbishop Joseph L. Bemardin of Cincinnati, said: “Obviously, our domestic economic and social needs are pressing. Yet, the needs of those who are fleeing, many due to fear of oppression because of their Catholic faith, cannot be ignored.” Archbishop Bemardin said he had asked John McCarthy, director of USCC Migration and Refugee Services and coordinator of the U.S. Catholic Church’s Southeast Asia Resettlement Program, to work with diocesan representatives to provide the homes and jobs the refugees need. Noting that primary responsibility for any refugee movement to the United States rests with the U.S. government, the archbishop said the USCC expects that funding for expenses incurred in this effort on the diocesan level will come from the government. At a briefing session at USCC headquarters, McCarthy noted that the U.S. government has anticipated that about 130,000 Vietnamese refugees will come to this country. He said he expects U.S. Catholic agencies to handle from 60 to 70 percent of the refugees. The U.S. State Department has said that there are 75,000 Vietnamese relatives of U.S. citizens who are entitled to come to the United States and that about 50,000 other Vietnamese whose lives might be endangered by remaining in Vietnam under communist rule have been authorized to come to the United States. McCarthy said that, although about 10 percent of the Vietnamese population are Catholic, Catholicism has been the religion of the educated class, many of whom cooperated with the United States in the conflict there. The operations director of the International Catholic Migration Commission in Geneva has been asked to go to Guam in an effort to make it possible for many refugees from Southeast Asia to go also to other countries, McCarthy said. The USCC Migration and Refugee Services is acting as a coordinator of voluntary agency efforts to resettle Southeast Asian refugees, and has been given a desk in the State Department’s Southeast Asian crisis center to DONALSONVILLE CHAPEL. Shown with Fr. Conal O’Leary, O.F.M., pastor (far right), and Bishop Raymond W. Lessard are some of the parish’s families. They are the Custer Claytons, the Jack Burtons, the Bob McDuffies, the Billy Wade Lewises, the H.E. Felders, the Charles Burkes and Mrs. Mary Hunter. Nuns Missing INSIDE STORY Amnesty, Clemency Pg. 2 Bicentennial Pg. 3 Entertainment Pg. 6 Housing Needs Pg. 7 LONDON (NC) - Early reports to reach London of the fate of Catholic institutions in the rout of South Vietnamese troops convey a picture of wrecked convents and homeless nuns in the teeming masses of refugees. Seventeen of the 18 convents of the Lovers of the Cross, a largely Vietnamese congregation of Sisters, have been destroyed in Cambodia and South Vietnam. About 200 of the Sisters struggled into Saigon on foot. The fate of the other 3,800 nuns is not known. Noel Charles, an official of the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD), said in reporting the arrival of the 200 nuns in Saigon: “We do not know the fate of the other 3,800 nuns.” Foreign Catholic workers have left the war zones in Cambodia, but about 300 Cambodians were still working with Catholic relief agencies in Phnom Penh just before the Cambodian capital fell to the Khmer Rouge. CAFOD, the Church’s official group in Britain for aid to the Third World of developing nations, was asked by Caritas Intemationalis, the Vatican’s coordinating agency, to appeal to the bishops of England and Wales for special collections for aid to Cambodia. The goal for Cambodian relief was the equivalent of $600,000 for immediate relief of destitute refugees who are pouring into Catholic Churches and centers. About half the sum has been sent, and the rest is promised. But this is for immediate needs, and not long-term relief. facilitate that coordination, McCarthy said. After receiving clearance for emigration to the United States at the processing centers on Guam, Wake Island or in the Philippines, McCarthy said, the refugees will be flown to Army bases in the United States. Local Catholic diocesan resettlement personnel will then begin to assist them in finding homes and jobs. McCarthy said an effort would be made to spread the refugees around the country and to avoid having them settle in ghettos or in areas of high unemployment. Discussing the controversial babylift of orphans from Vietnam, McCarthy said that only about 2,000 children were involved. Of those about 300 were handled by Catholic agencies and had been cleared for adoption prior to the emergency. They were, he said, children for whom adoption out of the country was the best alternative. He pointed out that some of them were handicapped and others were children of mixed U.S.-Vietnamese parentage. ARMENIANS PROTEST -- Armenians rally at the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, protesting the Turkish massacre of their countrymen 60 years ago. The U.S. Catholic Conference took part in a three day meeting in New York discussing “Religion’s Role in a Violent World” sponsored in part by the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America. (NC Photo by John Lei) HEADLINE ff If HOPSCOTCH Holy Year Influx VATICAN CITY (NC) -- Few of the rich may be making the European grand tour, but the Holy Year has brought to Rome a great influx of people of modest means, especially young people and workers. That was the message which the secretary general of the Vatican’s Central Committee for the Holy Year gave journalists April 23 in a press conference on the Jubilee Year, now about a third over. Bishop Antonio Mazza also announced that the flow of pilgrims was so great that papal general audiences and Masses celebrated by Pope Paul VI after May 1 will take place in St. Peter’s Square. Gen. Lane Dies WASHINGTON (NC) -- Maj. Gen. Thomas A. Lane, a proponent of many conservative views on public and religious affairs, died of cancer at Walter Reed Hospital here on April 20 at the age of 68. Lane was the author of a syndicated column that was carried by The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic weekly published in St. Paul, Minn., the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and other newspapers across the nation. Priest Protests to IRS JERSEY CITY, N. J. (NC) - In a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a pacifist priest with a long record of involvement in social causes has stated his intention not to file an income tax return. Father John P. Egan of St. Boniface’s church here informed the IRS that he would not file the required tax form as a protest over what he called the “war-making” policies of the U.S. government. Bishops Rap Ford Plan NOTRE DAME, Ind. (NC) - Three Chicano bishops here branded the U.S. government’s proposals to bring thousands of South Vietnamese to the United States and the government’s insistence on deporting illegal aliens already here as “inconsistent.” In a sharply worded telegram to President Gerald R. Ford, the three bishops joined with the Midwest Council of La Raza and the Spanish-speaking Catholic Commission, a Midwestern group, in opposition to the government’s proposed action. The bishops were here to participate in a University of Notre Dame symposium on “Human Rights and Social Justice and the Church.” Contributions Increase VATICAN CITY (NC) -- Despite an economic recession, U.S. Catholics upped their contributions to the missions in 1974 by three percent to more than $21 million. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which oversees and helps fund the Church’s worldwide missionary effort, said the 1974 contribution of $21,219,598.33 was $610,708 above the 1973 contribution from U.S. Catholics.