PAGE 13 — The Georgia Bulletin, September 7, 1989
Brooklyn Church
Leaders Deplore
Racial Slayings
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BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CNS) — Local Catholic leaders
sharply condemned racial violence following the murder of
a black teen-ager by a white gang Aug. 23 in Bensonhurst, a
heavily Catholic, Italian-American neighborhood of
Brooklyn.
Police said between 10 and 30 young white males may
have been part of the bat-wielding gang that chased four
young blacks and gunned down one, 16-year-old Yusef
Hawkins.
The next day a group of 20 local leaders, including several
Catholic pastors, declared that they and “the overwhelm
ing majority of our people are determined to do battle
against the ignorance that leads to intolerance, hatred and
violence.”
Bishop Francis J. Mugavero of Brooklyn called Hawkins’
death “tragic and senseless.” He said that any “racially
motivated violence” requires Christians to “reaffirm our
belief in the dignity of each and every human being,
regardless of race, language and way of life.”
At weekend Masses in Bensonhurst parishes, priests
urged parishioners to replace racial hatred with tolerance
and love.
CHICAGO (CNS) — Father George Clements, known for
his adoption of three boys and social activism, has received
death threats for continuing an anti-drug crusade started in
June.
Both Father Clements and Father Michael Pfleger are
under police protection. They say the threats will not deter
their crusade.
The priests were arrested in June after they broke down
the door of an alleged drug paraphernalia warehouse. The
charges were later dropped.
More recently Fathers Clements and Pfleger lobbied the
Illinois Legislature for a bill that bans the commercial sale
of drug paraphernalia. The bill was passed and signed into
law by Gov. James R. Thompson Aug. 22 at Holy Angels
Church, where Father Clements is pastor.
The priests said they will work for passage of a nation
wide ban on drug paraphernalia introduced by U.S. Rep.
Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y. Father Pfleger said either he or
Father Clements will testify in September on drug abuse
before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
At the signing ceremony, Father Clements called for a
national day of prayer and fasting on Sept. 5, the day Presi
dent Bush is expected to unveil his administration’s anti
drug strategy.
“Jesus Christ told us some things can be accomplished
only through prayer and fasting,” Father Clements told the
New World, Chicago’s archdiocesan newspaper.
Since their anti-drug activities became publicized in
June, Fathers Clements and Pfleger have received death
threats. Father Pfleger said callers often identify
themselves as drug dealers.
“You feel a sense of anger,” he said. “But sometimes you
feel like you’re talking to a grown, mature businessman.
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“You and I as individuals have to build bridges between
people, love one another,” said Father Arthur Minichello,
pastor of St. Dominic’s Church, in his homily at evening
Mass Aug. 26.
The next day hundreds of demonstrators protesting
Hawkins’ death marched the five blocks from the site
where he was shot to St. Dominic’s, where a penance ser
vice was conducted at the church steps.
Father George Kuhn, a pastor from Manhattan's lower
East Side who participated in the march, said that only a
strong police presence prevented violent confrontation be
tween the marchers and counterdemonstrators.
“I never expected the numbers of people filled with
hatred and viciousness,” he said. “The violence in their
faces and words, it was scary.”
Police said Hawkins’ attackers apparently mistook the
black youth, who had come to the neighborhood to look at a
used car for sale, as a new boyfriend of Gina Feliciano.
Miss Feliciano, 18, had recently broken up with
neighborhood resident Keith Mondello and begun to date
Hispanics and blacks.
Mondello, 18, was one of several whites in their late teens
We’ve been told we’ve created a great loss of income, so I
can see why that fits.”
The priests have also suffered property damage. In July
Father Clements’ car radio and air conditioner were stolen.
Left behind was a sign that read: “The first of many. Your
friendly drug dealer.”
On Aug. 12, his car was stolen and found the next day
heavily damaged. Father Clements said telephone callers
told him they took the car and that “I better quit before it is
too late.”
And a brick was thrown through the front door of St.
Sabina Church in Chicago, where Father Pfleger is pastor.
A sign attached to the church threatened further reprisals.
The priests said they remained undaunted. “I know what
we’re doing is right,” Father Pfleger said.
Fathers Clements and Pfleger will speak at anti-drug
rallies, help monitor stores suspected of selling drug
paraphernalia, and organize protests in front of houses
identified by parishioners and community residents as the
scene of drug sales, Father Pfleger said.
“We are in a mighty struggle to save the United States,”
Father Clements said. “Drug abuse is the worst plague to
hit the world since the bubonic plague.”
or 20s who were charged by police in connection with the at
tack, which began outside Miss Feliciano’s house. Police
said he had previously threatened her and warned her to
stop bringing blacks into the neighborhood.
What was supposed to be a neighborhood prayer service
for Hawkins led by local clergy Aug. 28 turned into a rally
led by Congress of Racial Equality leader Roy Innis and
abrasive TV talk show host Morton Downey Jr.
When Father Minichello tried to lead the group in prayer,
he was shouted down by calls for Downey. The priests and
others in the crowd who had come to pray walked down to
the corner of the block to carry on the prayer service.
James Tancredi, a Bensonhurst resident who helped
organize the prayer service, told The Tablet, Brooklyn
diocesan newspaper, that those who disrupted it were out
siders.
"This is our neighborhood that was standing here,” he
said, referring to the ones who had left the rally to pray
together. “Those other people ... I’ve never seen half of
these people before.”
Father Robert J. Thelen, episcopal vicar for Brooklyn
West and a resident of St. Athanasius Parish in Ben
sonhurst, was also among the priests who had come to help
lead a prayer service.
“It turned out to be a circus,” he said, adding that he
“was extremely disturbed” by the demonstration led by
Downey and Innis.
At a news conference featuring religious and civic
leaders Aug. 29 at the residence of Cardinal John J. O’Con
nor of New York, Bishop Mugavero called for efforts to end
“discrimination ... prejudice, division ... and violence.”
But he also questioned the value of outsiders going to Ben
sonhurst to demonstrate amid the high tensions. “You have
to wonder what was accomplished,” he said.
The Tablet, in an editorial prepared for its Sept. 2 edition,
deplored the “mindless” killing of Hawkins by “a
marauding mob armed with baseball bats and a pistol.”
But the paper also criticized the “barbaric nonsense” of
confrontations in the days that followed. Marches featuring
people like Downey “are anything but peaceful,” it said,
and words exchanged between marchers and
counterdemonstrators have been “destructive and
obscene.”
Hawkins’ death calls for “mourning” and “reconcilia
tion,” not for actions that “deepen the rift” between blacks
and whites, the editorial said.
The issue, The Tablet said, “is not whether we will be
brothers and sisters in the Lord. The fact is that we are.
What will we do about it?”
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Father Clements Received Death Threats
