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New Shoes For Special Feet
BY THEA JARVIS
“Armed with her
paper pattern,
Sister Mary brought
the project back
to the Sisters
of the Visitation,
who met Jack’s need
with enthusiasm
and compassion.”
Seventy-two-year old Sister
Mary Elizabeth of the Visitation
Monastery in Snellville was
making her once-in-awhile visit
to the State Hospital in
Milledgeville when she first met
Jack.
He greeted Sister Mary and
the other visitors from the
Archdiocesan Council of
Catholic Women clad in bib
overalls and wearing only
pillowcases on his feet.
Jack, Sister Mary learned, is
mentally retarded and suffers
from elephantiasis, a chronic
skin disease which often results
in the enlargement of the legs
and the hardening and cracking
of the surrounding skin.
For Jack, whose feet were
beyond the size of ordinary men,
a choice of footwear was indeed
limited. But thanks to Sister
Mary Elizabeth and her
community at the Visitation
Monastery, Jack is now on his
way to possessing a shoe
wardrobe anyone would be
proud of.
On the day of Sister Mary’s
visit last February, ACCW
members from Saint Oliver
Plunkett Church in Snellville
carefully traced the size of Jack’s
feet, according to Eleanor
O’Connor, ACCW’s Community
Services Chairman.
Armed with her paper
pattern, Sister Mary brought the
project back to the Sisters of the
Visitation, who met Jack’s need
with enthusiasm and
compassion.
Mother Maria Charitas
Batista, superior of the Snellville
monastery, took charge of the
shoemaking and Jack Maddox,
owner of Snellville Shoe Repair,
was contacted. Maddox had
previously made a pair of size 14
sandals for a customer and said
the work wasn’t too difficult.
“The sandals were made with
all adjustable straps since his feet
would swell sometimes more
than others,” he explained. The
pattern used was nine inches
wide by 15 inches long.
Although the sisters offered
to pay Maddox for his work,
which was spread out over
several days and involved
substantial cost, the kindly
cobbler declined remuneration.
“I didn’t figure they had
much money,” he said. “I felt
real good when they called and
said the sandals had worked out
fine.”
Maddox’s wife, Heidi, who
does custom leatherwork at the
shop and helped to dye the
sandals, said she felt sorry for
Jack because he had no family or
friends to supply him with
proper footwear.
“It made me feel good to be
able to help with something like
this,” Mrs. Maddox said.
Back in Milledgeville, Jack is
proudly wearing his new shoes
and has augmented his wardrobe
with a pair of corduroy slippers
and woolen socks handmade by
the Sisters of the Visitation. The
slippers, designed by Sister Mary
Regina, have zippers and are easy
to open and close. The large
socks were knitted by Mother
Charitas and Sister Mary Josefa.
Jane Haddock, Coordinator §
of Volunteer Services at Central 1
State Hospital, wrote to Mother °
Maria Charitas to express her 5
gratitude for all the sisters had w
done for Jack.
The day after he received his
new shoes, she recounted, he
met one of the therapists at the
door so that he might display his
new acquisitions.
“No more pillowcases,” Jack
said with pride.
IMMACULATE of the
Visitation Monastery in
Snellville slips her tiny feet into
specially made sandals to
illustrate their comparative size.
Vol. 19 No. 23
P
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Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Thursday, June 4,1981
$8.00 per year
SNELLVILLE’S CHURCH, St. Oliver Plunkett,
will be dedicated June 21 at 11 a.m. by Archbishop
Thomas Donnellan. Just three years ago, on
Father’s Day, June 18, 1978, Mass was celebrated
at South Gwinnett High School to inaugurate ‘The
Catholic Church of Snellville.” In December 1978,
the new parish was officially named St. Oliver
Plunkett, the first parish in America known to be
named for the saint. Elevated to sainthood on Oct.
CENTRAL AMERICAN MISSIONARY:
The People Want
To Be Left Alone
12, 1975 by Pope Paul VI, St. Oliver Plunkett was
the first Irish-born canonized saint in over 700
years. Father Terence Kane, pastor, was bom and
raised in Drogheda, Ireland, the official Irish shrine
to St. Oliver Plunkett. From a modest beginning of
108 families, the parish now serves over 350
families and approximately 300 students in its CCD
program.
Task Force Leader
Has Role As Healer
BY JAIME FONSECA
WASHINGTON (NC) - Jesuit
Father Philip Pick, a 30-year veteran
of mission work in Central America,
said that all the people in turbulent El
Parish Appointments
Archbishop Thomas A.
Donnellan extends a warm
welcome to the Archdiocese of
Atlanta and announces the
following appointments,
effective Saturday, July 15:
As assistant pastors at Our
Lady of the Assumption
Church: Reverend Mark G.
Kenney, S.M., and Reverend
Edward Murray, S.M., and
Brother Richard Kirk, S.M. will
serve his apostolic-year
experience at Our Lady of the
Assumption;
Effective Thursday, May 28,
as Chaplain at the United States
Penitentiary with residence at
the Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception: Reverend Walter
A. Halaburda.
Also, effective Wednesday,
June 10, Reverend Terry W.
Young has been assigned
residence at Saint Oliver
Plunkett Church in Snellville.
Salvador and Honduras want is to be
left alone.
“I have been many times in El
Salvador and I know these villagers
want peace and to be left alone, no
outside interference, so they can plant
the crops, feed the kids, go to market
and improve their lives,” he said.
That is also the way it is in his own
parish in Yoro, Honduras, he
reported.
“We have about 6,000 people in
the town and 40,000 in the 130
villages scattered throughout the
mountains of Yoro Department.
There are two priests, six nuns and lots
of lay helpers, whom we call ‘delegates
of the word’ because they read the
Gospel in the Christian communities.
It helps to have local people in church
work because roads and
communications are so poor.
Sometimes you can go by jeep, but
often only mules will take you to
these villages.
“Most of the small farmers raise
com and beans, but also get seasonal
work at thfe coffee plantations to
increase their income.”
Father Pick spoke of his work in an
interview while in Washington on
home leave.
There are 45 American Jesuit
priests, brothers and seminarians in
Honduras, he said. The order sponsors
several training centers for lay helpers.
The Jesuits also hold informational
meetings to exchange experiences.
“We keep very much to our
pastoral work to see how we can
improve it and leave other
responsibilities to the people. For
example, parents took over the high
school after the Jesuits established it.
Another example is lay participation
in running Radio Progreso. Besides
broadcasting pastoral programs, the
Jesuit-run radio station instructs
peasants about how to improve their
homes, their crops and their family
life,” Father Pick said.
As a result of such efforts the local
leadership can provide workers for
development projects, often financed
by secular sources in Europe or North
America, the priest added. As an
example he cited the rural
development works among the
Jicaque Indians.
Father Pick, a radio technician in
his spare time, helped the Archdiocese
of San Salvador, El Salvador, rebuild
its radio station, YSAX-Radio
Panamericana, after terrorists bombed
its transmitters in 1979. It was
destroyed again last September and
efforts are being made by the
archdiocese to put it back on the air.
YSAX had high audience ratings for
its broadcasts of the homilies of
Archbishop Oscar Romero of San
Salvador, a defender of the poor who
was murdered in March 1980.
BY MONSIGNOR
NOELC. BURTENSHAW
Charlie Rinkevich always knew he
would be a cop. And that’s the way it
all worked out. The tall,
six-footer-plus looks like a cop. He’s in
the Kojak vein, a little slimmer with
cigar waving in the air as he speaks
rather than the more chic lollipop.
But these days Charlie Rinkevich
has gone beyond being a cop. He has
become a healer of a community. And
the community involved is Atlanta.
When President Reagan responded
to the call from the city of Atlanta for
help in funding the continuing
investigation of the murdered
It’s Summer
Beginning with this
issue, the Georgia Bulletin
is on summer schedule. The
paper will be published
every other week, rather
than every week, through
the month of August.
Happy summer!
children, he appointed his Vice
President to implement a Federal
response. Vice President Bush looked
to the Attorney General and that
office immediately responded: “Set
up the program; we have the man.”
Charles Francis Rinkevich was
annointed.
“As head of the Federal Task
Force,” said the lanky Rinkevich in
his Marietta Street office, “my job is
to see that the Federal Government
Charles F. Rinkevich
responds to the needs of this city. We
are not a part of the investigation.
That’s in the hands of the Atlanta
Police and the FBI. But the other
needs, the ones that, taken care of,
will free the police to do their job - we
handle those.” »
According to Rinkevich, there are
three. Money to assist the
investigation, implement prevention
programs and respond to the
emotional distress of the community.
This is where tough cop and head of
the federal Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration (LEAA) in
the Southeast, Charlie Rinkevich, has
become a healer.
“The first two needs have been
handled well, I think,” said Rinkevich.
“We got the money - $1.5 million.
The programs, especially for the
summer, are on target. It’s the last one
that is tough. There is fear and distress
in this city.”
“The black community is
certainly minimizing the racial
aspect,” continues the task force
leader. “They tell you they don’t
believe it’s racial. But there is constant
fear. The people have described it as
like living in London during the blitz
or living in the tensions of Northern
Ireland. Parents are concerned for the
(Continued on page 6)
ATLANTA’S SENIOR PRIEST - Monsignor
Joseph G. Cassidy who lives in retirement in
Dalton, Ga., receives the Catholic Extension
Society’s fourth “Lumen Christi” award for home
mission work from His Eminence John Cardinal
Cody (left) Archbishop of Chicago and chancellor
of the Society. Others participating in the
ceremony at the Society’s annual board of
governors meeting are Archbishop Thomas
Donnellan, who nominated Monsignor Cassidy and
the Very Rev. Edward J. Slattery (far right) of
Chicago, president of the Catholic Extension
Society. A gift of $25,000 goes with the award to
be used in the Religious Education programs of the
Archdiocese.
ARCHDIOCESAN
SUMMER DAY
'81 CAMPS
When We Need The BEST-We Ask For
YOU
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