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PAGE 9 — The Southern Cross, May 24,1990 "Pilgrimage Not Just Protest But Journey Of Hope" MARCH IN MACON — Participants in the National Pilgrimage for Aboliton of the Death Penalty are pictured in Macon (May 12) enroute to Mercer University for an educational forum. (Photo by Mary Ann Bates) BY RITA McINERNEY GRIFFIN, Ga. (CNS) — She has been present at three executions, Sister Helen Prejean told participants in the National Pilgrimage tor Abolition of the Death Penalty as they paused May 16 at Sacred Heart Church in Griffin. “They are not heroes,” she admitted of her executed friends. “I don’t condone what they did. But they died as sons of God.” Sister Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille who was coordinator of the 400-mile pilgrimage, called the effort “not just a protest but a journey of hope.” The march began May 5 at the site of Florida’s electric chair in Starke and ended in Atlan ta May 18. In the mixture of people participating, Sister Prejean said, “there is hope for the country.”A core group of participants walked the entire route, joined by others along the way. The pilgrimage ended the same day Dalton Prejean, given the death penalty for the murder of a state trooper, was ex ecuted in the electric chair at the state penitentiary in Angola, La. Prejean, no relation to the nun who organized the march, was the focus of an international campaign to stop the execution. The march culminated “Lighting the Torch of Conscience,” a yearlong cam paign sponsored by Amnesty Interna tional, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the American Friends Service Committee and the Na tional Interreligious Task Force on Criminal Justice. Taking part were relatives of victims, women with husbands or sons on death row, former inmates, ministers, priests, religious and young people. Twelve days earlier when they began their journey they had been strangers; now they were en thusiastic, tolerant comrades. Hikers appeared sunburned and healthy. Most were walking 10 to 20 miles a day, sleeping on wooden floors in country churches or in state parks. To avoid con frontations, overnight locations were not announced. The prayer service at Sacred Heart of fered several marchers a chance to ad dress people from the Griffin community and from Atlanta. The Rev. Fred D. Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlan ta told participants that he was “making a witness for those who do not have a voice ... the disposables to whom society has said, ‘you do not have basic rights.’” Bill Pelke said his grandmother was murdered five years ago. Three years ago, he told his listeners, “Jesus touched my heart and taught me that love and forgiveness was the right answer.” An ex-prisoner, William Gall, now associated with the American Friends Ser vice Committee, said the church was im portant “in my reintegration into the com munity. ... God is not through with me yet.’ ’ Magdaleno Rose-Avila, a former farm worker, said, “We come looking for justice.... The dream that keeps me going is what it would be like without the death penalty.” This 12th day of the journey had been long, beginning 20 miles away in Jackson, where death row is located at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center. Sister Prejean said one or two people in Griffin had waved small U.S. flags at them as their way of expressing disapproval. Others gave the thumbs-down signal. In an interview before the service, she told The Georgia Bulletin, newspaper of the Atlanta Archdiocese, that she has been involved with fighting the death penalty, with the poor and with victims of crimes in New Orleans since 1980. She first became involved with death row inmates when she wrote to Elmo Patrick on death row in Louisiana. When she found he had no one, she began visiting him. “I ended up seeing him die. His last words were to me,” said Sister Prejean. For her the pilgrimage across Florida and Georgia — states leading the nation in numbers of executions since the death penalty was restored in 1976 — is a way of telling the Catholic bishops that “we’re joining you.” The U.S. bishops issued a statement in 1980 calling for abolition of the death penalty. Sister Prejean believes people “are beginning to learn how selective” the death penalty is in the United States. Of 20,000 persons who commit homicide each year, about 200 are given the death sentence. All are poor, she said. “Eighty- five percent of the time the victim is white. When black kills black they don’t even pro secute,” she claimed. .The death sentence, in her view, “is not worthy of us as a country.” Two Bishops' Groups Collect $4.8 Million For Disaster Relief WASHINGTON (CNS) — Two organiza tions affiliated with U.S. bishops have col lected $4.8 million to help victims of last fall’s Hurricane Hugo and the California earthquake. The American Board of Catholic Mis sions, which usually aids home missions, has disbursed $2.6 million to the Arch dioceses of San Juan and the dioceses of Caguas and Arecibo, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, Charleston, S.C., Charlotte, N.C., and St. John’s-Basseterre in Antigua. Sixty-one U.S. dioceses contributed money for hurricane relief from the board, which is a standing committee of the Na tional Conf erence of Catholic Bishops. The largest allocation, $895,000, went to the Diocese of St. Thomas. The National Catholic Disaster Relief Committee, organized by the NCCB and Pope's Visit To Malta (Continued from page 1) cultural leaders and the nation’s youth. He will greet an ecumenical gathering at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Mdina. While only about 4,000 Maltese are not baptized Catholic, the nation has a Muslim com munity and several Protestant churches. The pope also will greet the families of the 230 male religious and 547 female religious who work in foreign missions. Maltese religious working in Malta include another 625 men and almost 1,300 women. There also are six cloistered communities on the island with a total of 120 nuns. According to the Maltese bishops’ press office, this will be the first-ever visit of a reigning pontiff to Malta. In the 1600s, two men who later became popes visited: the future popes Alexander VII and Innocent XII. The first Christian in Malta was St. Paul, who was shipwrecked on the island in the year 60, according to the Acts of the Apostles. The pope is scheduled to visit two places associated with St. Paul’s three-month stay. After reciting the Regina Coeli prayer May 27, he will go to St. Paul’s Grotto at Rabat, which popular tradition says was St. Paul’s Maltese home. The cathedral at Mdina, where the ecumenical gathering is scheduled, is said to have been built on the site of the palace operated by Catholic Charities USA, has collected $2.6 million. Some $1.2 million allocated for Califor nia earthquake victims was collected from 6,000 individuals, parishes and dioceses nationwide. Distributed through the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the dioceses of Oakland, Monterey and San Jose, the money was being used for housing, social services and church and school repairs. of Publius, the prince who welcomed St. Paul to the island. Although archeological evidence sug gests that a small Christian community was always present on the island after St. Paul’s departure, it wasn’t until the fourth century that Christianity gained widespread acceptance. The church’s position suffered with the Arab invasion of 870, and Islam became the dominant faith. The Norman invasion in 1090 gave greater freedoms to Chris tians, although Muslims continued to be the majority for another century. The Muslims were expelled in 1224, and from 1253 Malta had a regular succession of Catholic bishops. Another $822,000 has gone for hurricane relief. The remaining $200,000 in undesignated contributions also was to be used in the relief effort. Not included in those sums were con tributions made directly to the affected dioceses and the $750,000 raised through the efforts of the Catholic Church Exten sion Society, which supports missions in the United States and U.S. territories. In lj>30, me islands were given to the Knights of St. John, also known as the Knights of Malta. Under the Knights’ pro tection, the Maltese Diocese was headed by a resident bishop, synods were held to implement the teachings of the Council of Trent, churches were built and many religious orders were established. In the 1790s, Napoleon invaded Malta on his way to Egypt and held it under siege for two years. The Maltese, with the help of the British, expelled the French in 1800 and formally came under the protection of the British. Independence was granted in 1964, and the last British troops left the island in 1979.