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PAGE 6 — The Southern Cross, September 5, 1985
Pope To Visit Liechtenstein Sept. 8
Latin Religious Seen Moving To Non-Marxist Liberation Theology
The papal plans call for a meeting with the country’s
hereditary monarch, 79-year-old Prince Franz Josef II, and
his family. In 1983, the prince led a pilgrimage of 750
Liechtenstein residents to the Vatican for a meeting with
the pope.
During the meeting, the prince invited the pope to return
the visit.
Liechtenstein has been a principality since 1719. It was a
part of the Holy Roman Empire until it became indepen
dent in 1806.
On Aug. 28 the Vatican and Liechtenstein announced the
establishment of diplomatic relations.
“As the minor country in Europe that strives on a na
tional and international level to cooperate in a policy of
peace based on Christian principals, the principality of
Liechtenstein feels bound in a special way with the Holy See
and its efforts towards more peace and greater freedom
among peoples,’’ said the Parliament in its July 4 state
ment approving the papal visit.
Bishop Asks Baseball Player
How Faith Failed Him
DETROIT (NC) — Bishop Kenneth Povish of Lansing has
a question for Detroit Tigers pitcher Frank Tanana: Where
did the Catholic faith fail you?
“It’s painful to read that the celebrated Detroit Catholic
Central athlete came home saying what he does about his
Catholic upbringing,” wrote Bishop Povish in his weekly
column for Lansing’s diocesan newspaper, The Catholic
Weekly.
Bishop Povish was reacting to an article written about
Tanana in The Michigan Catholic, Detroit archdiocesan
newspaper.
In the article, Tanana said that a conversation with a
former teammate about the Bible and living as a Christian
changed his life. “I’d grown up Catholic, attended Catholic
schools, but this was the first time that I’d heard what the
Bible said. I knew that I didn’t have a personal relationshiip
with Jekus and I needed that if I was going to be happy.”
Tanana, 32, said he had his experience after injuring his
pitching arm while playing for the California Angels. The
injury threatened his career and left him reflecting on his
future inside and outside of baseball.
The bishop said, “Holy smoke, I have a whole raft of
cousins, male and female, who went to Detroit Catholic
high schools and later sent their children to them too,” the
bishop wrote. “While not in touch with all of them, I don’t
know any that came away as empty as Tanana.”
Bishop Povish wrote that he was pleased that Tanana
“got his life straightened out.” He said he could offer a
number of reasons to explain Tanana’s situation: “He may
have been the popular jock at Detroit Catholic Central who
didn’t do or learn anything else in high school. He made big
money early, and maybe he didn’t know how to handle it.
He admits he was ‘traveling in the fast lane’ and not with
the best company...
“Any one who reads the articles about him in the sports
pages has to be glad that he has straightened his life out and
given it solid direction,” the bishop wrote.
Tanana joined the Tigers when he was traded by the
Texas Rangers.
PITCH FOR THE BIBLE — Detroit Tigers
pitcher Frank Tanana, who graduated from
Detroit Catholic Central High School, said he
discovered the Bible after injuring his pitching
arm when he was with the California Angels.
“I’d grown up Catholic, attended Catholic
schools,” he said, “but this was the first time
that I’d heard what the Bible said. “In his col
umn in The Catholic Weekly, Lansing, Mich.,
diocesan newspaper, Bishop Kenneth Povish
(left) of Lansing asks: Where did the Catholic
faith fail Frank Tanana? (NC Photos)
BY AGOSTINO BONO
NC News Service
Liechtenstein plans to receive Pope John Paul II “with
joy and gratitude, in a manner which is worthy of and com
mensurate with the circumstances of our small country,”
said the nation’s Parliament in approving the Sept. 8 papal
visit.
The statement reflects the tiny Alpine country’s attitude
towards its size.
Liechtenstein is the size of the District of Columbia, but
its 26,000 residents would about half fill Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial Stadium, where the Washington Redskins play
their home football games.
The Parliament has 15 members. The country has no cur
rency of its own, using the Swiss franc. Switzerland is also
responsible for Liechtenstein’s telecommunications
system.
Although 82 percent of the population is Catholic and
Catholicism is the state religion, Liechtenstein has no
diocese of its own. The entire country forms a corner of the
Diocese of Chur, Switzerland.
The country is nestled along the Rhine River between
Switzerland and Austria. About 60 percent of Liechtenstein
is in the Alps and the rest by the Rhine valley, where most
of the population lives in scattered villages. The largest, the
capital of Vaduz, has a population of 5,000.
The pope plans to go to Liechtenstein as part of his
pastoral program of visiting Catholics around the world,
said Joaquin Navarro-Vails, Vatican press spokesman.
Sept. 8 was chosen because it is celebrated in many Euro
pean countries as the feast of the birth of Mary, he said.
The pope “always looks to build a trip around a Marian
feast or a visit to a Marian shrine,” said Navarro-Valls.
During the pope’s nine-and-a-half-hour stay, he plans to
celebrate an outdoor Mass to commemorate Mary’s birth
and to dedicate a chapel to her.
The papal visit coincides with a yearlong spiritual
renewal program in Liechtenstein. Such programs, called
folk missions, are held every 10 years to further understan
ding of church teachings and to deepen personal spirituali
ty . The core elements of the program are parish speeches
by invited guests, called folk missionaries, and increased
reception of the sacraments.
Because Liechtenstein has no airport, the pope plans to
fly to Zurich, Switzerland, then take a 45-minute helicopter
ride to the tiny country.
NEW YORK (NC) — Latin America’s 150,000 Religious
are generally moving toward some form of liberation
theology, but they are more critical of Marxist models than
in the past, said the new head of the Conference of Latin
American Religious.
Jesuit Father Luis Ugalde, a sociologist at the Catholic
University of Caracas, Venezuela, was elected to a three-
year term as CLAR president at its assembly in Guatemala
last April. CLAR represents men and women Religious
throughout Latin America. The priest was interviewed
while attending the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference
of Major Superiors of Men Aug. 11-15 in New York.
Father Ugalde said he found the current of thinking at the
CMSM assembly similar to that of CLAR.
He said Guatemala had been chosen for the CLAR
assembly because the political situation there was the
worst in Latin America, and CLAR wished to show support
for the Guatemalan church and Religious. Guatemala’s
government views as “dangerous” any church personnel
working with the 60 percent of the population that is Indian,
he said.
At the assembly Father Ugalde said, delegates spent a lot
of time in reflection on their experience with “ the very
poor” and preparing a document on “how to reinterpret our
original charism in this new situation.”
In the past the poor have commonly been viewed as ob
jects of assistance, he said, but Religious how are focusing
on helping the poor become “subjects” in church and socie
ty, people who express their own ideas developed out of
their own experience. The key issue, he said, is not
theology, liberation or otherwise, but letting the poor speak
and “change the life of our church.”
Father Ugalde said Religious now believe they and other
church leaders sometimes went too far in trying to reform
popular religious practices after the Second Vatican coun
cil, and they now give more respect to the “religiosity” of
the people.
In that earlier period, he said, some Religious trying to
bring changes in society were attracted to the Soviet model.
But today, he said, they know more about Marxism, and so
have a different view.
“Fifteen years ago, some people made statements that
were not mature,” Father Ugalde said. “When people get a
new idea, sometimes they are not able to make many
nuances, and sometimes they are a little naive.”
He noted, however, that he still considered it valuable for
Catholics to study Karl Mark’s critique of religion and to
guard against situations where the church might be func
tioning as an opiate, as Marx claimed it did.
Father Ugalde said the attraction of Cuba, which he has
visited twice, as a model for other countries in Latin
America has so diminished that he did not think even the
Sandinista rulers of Nicaragua wished to take that route.
Regarding Nicaragua, Father Ugalde said Latin
American Religious were about evenly divided, half
favorably inclined toward the present government and half
opposed. But he said even some Religious critical of the
Sandinista government, including those serving in it, con
sider the alternative represented by the guerrillas worse.
They argue, he said, that overthrow of the present govern
ment would mean a civil war costing thousands of lives, and
the outcome would be a Chilean-style military dictatorship.