Newspaper Page Text
Vol. 28 No. 16
Thursday, April 19, 1990
$15.00 Per Year
EASTER BASKETRY — Martha Lesniewski brings her family’s
basket of Easter food to be blessed April 14 at the Shrine of the Im
maculate Conception following the Polish custom of ending the Lenten
fast with the blessing of food. (Photo by Linda Schaefer)
Pope Links Eastern Europe
To Easter Message Of Hope
BY AGOSTINO BONO
VATICAN CITY (CNS)
— Pope John Paul II
celebrated Christ’s resur
rection by hailing “the
reawakening of many
democracies’’ after more
than a half-century of war
and repression, “often in
the name of godless
ideologies. ’’
This “is leading to
dialogue and trust between
peoples,” he said April 15,
during his Easter “urbi et
orbi” (to the city and to the
world) speech from the
central balcony of St.
Peter’s Basilica.
Less than a week before
his first trip to Eastern
Europe in the wake of rapid
changes which have shat
tered the Iron Curtain, the
pope praised the upswing
in democracies "after the
years of dictatorships
which have deprived men
and women of their basic
freedoms.”
The Easter speech also
linked political freedom to
the need to help Third
World populations escape
poverty.
"There can be no free
dom where misery con
tinues to exist,” he said.
The pope personalized
his appeal to rich nations to
be “free from selfishness”
by recalling his ex
periences earlier this year
in Africa’s drought-
stricken Sahel region.
“I have seen the sand
burying villages, drying up
wells, burning the eyes,
turning children into
skeletons, paralyzing the
strength of the young,” the
pope said.
"Wealthy nations of the
civilization of opulence. Do
not be indifferent to this
great tragedy,” he said.
“Be ever more urgently
resolved to help those peo
ple who struggle each day
for survival,” he added.
"Let human and Chris
tian solidarity be the
challenge that provokes
your conscience to make
the sand slowly give way to
the advancement of human
dignity, an abundance of
bread, and the return to
laughter, employment,
hope and progress,” said
the pope.
The pope put his praise of
reawakened democracies
and the need to overcome
(Continued on page 7)
INSIDE
Easter Images
At the Shrine,
‘fun’ begins page 5
Candles illuminate
monastery page 7
Sister Carolyn Oberkirch
Housing dream nears
realization page 8
John Henry Newman
A quality paperback
reviewed page 9
Mother Teresa Resigns As Superior
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope John Paul II has accepted
the resignation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta as superior of
the Missionaries of Charity because of her age and poor
health, the Vatican announced April 11.
The pope also approved the holding of a general chapter
of the missionaries Sept. 8, probably in Calcutta, India, to
elect a successor to the 79-year-old Nobel Peace Prize win
ner.
Last December, doctors in India implanted a heart
pacemaker in Mother Teresa, who was hospitalized earlier
in the fall for heart problems.
Mother Teresa wrote bishops and archbishops in late
March and told them of her resignation before the Vatican
announcement. She said the Sept. 8 date for the general
chapter meeting was a “birthday gift to our Lady.” Mary’s
birthday is celebrated Sept. 8.
“I would be very grateful if you would kindly pray for us,
that we do all for the glory of God, the good of our society
and our poor,” Mother Teresa told the bishops.
She also said she would be grateful for suggestions that
would contribute to "the good of our society.”
In a separate letter to bishops, Mother Teresa said she
did not want any fund raising done for her or her nuns.
"In the nearly 40 years that the Missionaries of Charity
have existed in the church, we have depended strictly upon
divine providence to meet all our needs,” she wrote in the 3
letter, dated March 25.
“Jesus has cared for us with a tender, generous love. It is
his Father’s work, and he will provide for it. Yes, we accept
contributions from individuals, but we do not solicit them or
allow anyone to solicit them for us,” she wrote.
She said she shared her request “particularly in view of
my enclosed letter” concerning her resignation.
Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, which started
as a local religious community in Calcutta, India, 40 years
ago, now has more than 400 houses in 92 countries caring for
society’s poor and helpless.
The order has about 1,900 members, of whom about 30 are
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
contemplative sisters. Most of the contemplatives are in the
United States.
More than 160 houses are in India. There are about 170
sisters and 28 houses in the United States and five in
Canada.
(Continued on page 15)