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4 The Southern Cross DIOCESE OF SAVANNAH NEWSPAPER Thursday, July 3,1975 Single Copy Price — 15 Cents Diocese The Diocese of Savannah is participating in the national effort in locating sponsors who will assist the thousands of refugees from Vietnam to find a place to live and a job to live by. There are over 100,000 refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia in the United States at the present time. Sixty percent of the families have chosen the United States Catholic Conference Migration and Refugee Services as the voluntary agency to help them locate sponsors. The Diocese of Savannah has indicated its willingness to share in this national effort. On May 17, Bishop Raymond Lessard appointed Rev. Msgr. Daniel J. Bourke as Resettlement Director for this diocese. During this past month, many encouraging things have happened in the diocese. To date, 26 refugee families have been settled in the Diocese of Savannah through the agency of the Seeks Refugee Sponsors United States Catholic Conference. This represents a total of 89 refugees. During this past week, the Diocesan Office for Migrants and Refugees has written to every parish in the diocese, to the Deanery Councils of Catholic How To Help? See Page 2 Women, and to the various councils of the Knights of Columbus, asking them to consider whether or not they would act as sponsors for a refugee family. To date, several parishes have responded. At the present moment, Nativity Parish and Blessed Sacrament Parish, Savannah, and St. Teresa’s Parish, Albany, are awaiting the arrival of a refugee family. Cathedral Parish, Savannah, is presently in the process of making application for a refugee family. Participating in the sponsoring project are the Catholic communities in Hazlehurst, McRae, Lyons-Vidalia, and the Cairo community of St. Augustine’s Parish, Thomasville. Many Vietnamese families are already living and working in these towns. It is hoped that in the next few weeks several other parishes and organizations within the diocese will respond to this request. Shared sponsorship is an ideal parish or organizational endeavor. It is the commitment to help new arrivals take their first steps in our community. Through shared sponsorship, the people of a parish or of an organization join together to give much needed support in providing the following: a place to live with basic temporary necessities; a school for the children; and a job for the family breadwinner. Sponsors are not committed legally or financially. Sponsorship is a moral commitment to help a refugee family secure independence and become self-sustaining in as short a time as possible. Your parish can work together to provide the basics needed to resettle some Vietnamese or Cambodian families. Since many refugee families would welcome the opportunity to live in somewhat close proximity to one another, parishes are urged to sponsor a group of families. Keep in mind that funding, as needed, will be provided by your diocesan resettlement director. All are asked to support this Christian endeavor with a welcoming hand from your parish. THIS FAMILY waits at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in Pennsylvania. Sixty percent of the families have chosen the USCC’s Migration and Refugee Services as the voluntary agency to help them locate sponsors who will assist them in finding a place to live and a job to live by. Bishops-Ford Meeting Called ‘Positive, ‘Constructive BISHOPS MEET PRESIDENT - Five U S. bishops meet June 18 with President Gerald Ford (center right) and White House staff members to discuss Church positions and public policy on various issues. The bishops (from left) are Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio; Bishop James Rausch, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and U.S. Catholic Conference (NCCB-USCC); Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York; Archbishop Joseph Bernardin of Cincinnati, NCCB-USCC president; and Archbishop Thomas Donnellan of Atlanta. (NC Photo) WASHINGTON (NC) ~ A White House meeting between President Gerald Ford and five American Catholic bishops has been called “cordial and positive” by the bishops and “good and constructive” by an administration official. , r . - . In the hour-long meeting, the bishops discussed Church positions on the world food crisis, the Vietnamese refugees, illegal aliens, abortion and nonpublic school aid. The bishops were represented by the executive committees of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC): Archbishop Joseph Bernardin of Cincinnati, NCCB-USCC president; Bishpp James Rausch, NCCB-USCC general secretary; Archbishop Thomas Donnellan of Atlanta, NCCB-USCC treasurer; Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York, elected member of the NCCB executive committee and Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, elected member of the USCC executive committee. (NCCB-USCC vice-president, Cardinal John Carberry of St. Louis, was out of the country and unable to attend the meeting.) The meeting was also attended by Attorney General Edward Levi, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Caspar Weinberger, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Ingersoll and several members of the White House staff. The President left the meeting after about 45 minutes, while the others remained. Archbishop Bernardin said he was pleased with the meeting “in the sense that there was an understanding of our concerns.” Following is a summary of the bishops’ positions, as described by Archbishop Bernardin, and a summary of some of the President’s responses, as described by a White House official who attended the meeting: - Calling the food crisis “a serious crisis requiring strong and creative leadership for its solution,” the bishops asked for continued and expanded American food aid with a “high percentage” devoted to humanitarian needs, as well as efforts to increase agricultural production in the developing nations and an international grain reserve. The president, citing a poor crop last year and budgetary problems, said he approved the highest food aid option presented to him for Fiscal Year 1975. He said he would continue to watch the situation on a quarterly basis and, with a good crop' year expected, said he expected increased aid next year. -- The bishops said the USCC would continue in its efforts to secure sponsors for Vietnamese refugees and was particularly concerned about the fate of some 40,000 refugees still on Phuquoc Island off the coast of Monsignor Marvin J. LeFrois has a key role in promoting, throughout the Savannah area, the most historic spiritual assembly convening in the United States in the past 50 years. He is a Diocesan Coordinator for the 41st International Eucharistic Congress. Msgr. LeFrois Vietnam and some 25,000 refugees now in other countries in the Pacific. The President “applauded and expressed great gratitude” for the Catholic Church’s response on the refugees. He said the refugees are now leaving the resettlement camps at the rate of 700 a day, good in comparison to an earlier lower rate that has been criticized, but not good enough. He said he will review the progress weekly. - The bishops supported amnesty for the illegal aliens now in the United States, along with measures to prevent the problem from recurring. They supported family reunification measures and the establishment of a preference system for the Western Hemisphere similar to the process used for Eastern Hemisphere immigration. The President and Attorney General Edward Levi noted that the President had established a cabinet-level committee to study the illegal alien issue and assured the bishops that their views would be considered. - The bishops asked the president to “use the moral force of his office in support of a constitutional amendment to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion decision.” The bishops discussed no specific amendment and Cardinal Cooke, chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Pro-life Activities, said proposed amendments were now being studied in a Senate committee where they were being “clarified by the democratic process.” The Congress is a gathering of world Catholics and other Christians meeting in Philadelphia Aug. 1-8,1976. Monsignor LeFrois is pastor of St. Mary’s Church of Augusta, and joined nearly 100 U.S. religious leaders in Philadelphia June 4-5 to help organize local participation for the Congress throughout the nation. For a year preceding the Congress, Monsignor LeFrois will be involved in implementing a faith renewal program throughout the diocese in preparation for the event. He will also coordinate, through area travel agents, pilgrimages to the Congress. And for those who are unable to attend the event, Monsignor LeFrois will work with parishes to arrange liturgies similar to those being celebrated in Philadelphia during Congress Week. Purpose of the Congress is to deepen faith in and devotion to Christ in the Eucharist. The 28th Eucharistic Congress met in Chicago in 1926. The last Congress met in Melbourne, Australia in 1973. More than 1.5 million faithful attended. The bishops said the federal government should not support permissive abortions paid for with public money and said “in every way constitutionally permissible, the federal government should seek to respect the rights of the unborn.” The President reaffirmed as federal policy a 1971 directive issued by President Richard Nixon requiring that military hospitals follow the abortion laws of the states where they are located. Because some states have fought implementing new laws to conform to the Supreme Court decision, and because other federal agencies have followed the 1971 directive, those supporting the Supreme Court decision have asked that the Nixon policy be changed. - The bishops asked that the government support the inclusion of aid to nonpublic school students under the Elementary and Secondary School Act, which provides auxiliary services similar to those provided by a Pennsylvania law recently declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The bishops said they expected challenges to the federal law, but believed it was constitutional. The President said his administration was sympathetic to the law, which he signed last August. The bishops originally requested a meeting with the president on the food issue shortly after approving a “pastoral plan” on the world food crisis last November. The meeting was delayed because of a series of communications problems and problems in finding a mutually agreeable date. (The June 18 meeting took place during a USCC administrative committee meeting when a number of bishops were in Washington.) A conference spokesman said the other issues were added to the agenda because of recent events, not necessarily because other issues were not considered as important. SISTER MARY CORNILE DULOHERY, R.S.M., Administrator of Savannah’s St. Joseph’s Hospital, was sworn in as a member of The Georgia Board of Human Resources by Governor George Busbee in his office on Wednesday, June 18. Sister Cornile’s appointment marks the first time that a hospital representative has been a member of this important state board. Funeral For Cardinal Raimondi VATICAN CITY (NC) - American Cardinals John Wright and John Carberry and U. S. Ambassador to Italy John Volpe were among participants in a funeral Mass June 26 at St. Peter’s Basilica for Cardinal Luigi Raimondi. Cardinal Raimondi, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes and former apostolic delegate in the United States, died June 24 of a heart attack here. The Mass was celebrated by Archbishop Giuseppe Casoria, secretary of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. Seminarians from Rome’s North American College acted as acolytes. Cardinal Wright, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, and Cardinal Carberry of St. Louis are old friends of Cardinal Raimondi. In the name of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Luigi Traglia, dean of the College of Cardinals, read the final prayers of Christian burial. Cardinal Raimondi was to be buried in his hometown of Acqui-Lussito in Northern Italy. Msgr. LeFrois Coordinator ■ i For Eucharistic Congress Charismatic Committee Head WASHINGTON (NC) - Bishop Gerard L. Frey of Lafayette, La., has been named chairman of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (NCCB) Ad Hoc Committee for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. The committee will serve as the official conference liaison with the charismatic renewal movement. Formation of the committee was approved by the NCCB administrative Committee last March, shortly. after the bishops’ Committee for Pastoral Research and Practices published a statement on the Catholic Charismatic renewal. That statement called for continuing contact between leaders and members of the movement with bishops and pastors as well as the full integration of charismatic groups into the structures of parish life. Members of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal are, in addition to Bishop Frey, Bishop Raymond W. Lessard of Savannah, Ga., Auxiliary Bishop Raymond A. Lucker of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minn., and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph C. McKinney of Grand Rapids, Mich.