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PAGE 8 — The Georgia Bulletin, May 31,1990
Vatican Owns Telescope
Foes Outraged As Court
Lifts Ban On Observatory
BY INES PINTO
ALICEA
WASHINGTON (CNS) -
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals lifted a ban on
construction of a $200
million observatory in
southern Arizona that will
house a Vatican-owned
telescope, described as one
of the most powerful in the
world.
“We’re very pleased that
the court of appeals felt the
project should proceed,”
said Steve Emerine,
spokesman for the Univer
sity of Arizona, which is
planning to build the obser
vatory on Mount Graham,
one of Arizona’s highest
peaks.
But, Emerine told
Catholic News Service May
21 that construction of the
project will not begin until
several other hurdles are
overcome, including:
— A pending lawsuit
against the university by
environmentalists;
— A congressional hear
ing and investigation into
conflicting reports from
biologists of how the Mount
Graham red squirrel, an
endangered species living
on the mountain, would be
affected by the develop
ment of an observatory.
"I welcome both of them
because we need to have
the air cleared,” said
Jesuit Father Christopher
Corbally, the principal
scientist on the project, of
the congressional in
vestigation and hearing.
“Astronomers can’t work
under a cloud either
figuratively or literally.”
The appeals court lifted a
four-month freeze on the
observatory imposed
March 26 by U.S. District
Judge Alfredo Marquez in
Tucson. Marquez was
responding to fears the pro
ject would lead to the squir
rel’s extinction.
Two employees at the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser
vice claimed the agency
had suppressed their reser
vations about the obser
vatory’s effects on the
squirrel population when it
released a 1988 impact
report.
The report found no
danger to the squirrel sur
vival, leading to congres
sional authorization for the
project.
'The appeals panel said
May 15 that it did not ap
pear the evidence
presented to Marquez was
new information not
previously considered by
Congress.
The court specified that
the judge could reinstate
the freeze “should subse
quent proceedings reveal
effects of the project not
previously considered.”
Environmentalists were
outraged at the appellate
court decision.
“What the 9th Circuit did
was confirm that the En
dangered Species Act is
dead, and specifically
anybody with enough
money can kill it at will,”
said Robin Silver,
spokesman for the
Maricopa Audubon Socie
ty-
The debate was inflamed
by the remarks of Interior
Secretary Manuel Lujan
Jr., who questioned the no
tion of protecting every en
dangered species by say
ing, "Nobody’s told me the
difference between a red
squirrel, a black one or a
brown one.”
Emerine said the dispute
between the university and
environmentalists should
not be seen "as a case of
either squirrels or
telescope.”
The squirrel, whose
numbers have dwindled to
about 150, can only be
found on Mount Graham,
southwest of Tucson. En
vironmentalists say
development would destroy
the unique ecological
system and force the squir
rel into extinction. Con
struction of the obser
vatory would mean clear
ing 24 of the mountain’s
11,000 acres, and the en
vironmentalists say that
would claim the desirable
squirrel habitat on the
mountain.
Apache tribal leaders are
angered about the project
because they say the
10,700-foot mountain, an
isolated section of the
Rocky Mountains, is
sacred.
The environmental
groups, however, have
taken their concerns a step
further. They filed a
lawsuit to halt construction
of the observatory. The
case is scheduled to be
heard July 16 in a district
court in Arizona, Emerine
said.
University officials con
tend poor pine crops in re
cent years have hurt the
squirrel population. They
said hunting, logging, use
of off-road vehicles and
Christmas tree-cutting
have been stopped because
of the planned observatory,
and that some 80 acres will
be reforested. They also
said they will continue
biological monitoring
throughout the project.
Meanwhile, the General
Accounting Office, an in
vestigation arm of Con
gress, was conducting its
probe into the conflicting
reports from the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service. The
investigation is scheduled
to be completed by June 26
when a congressional hear
ing is scheduled on the
same matter.
Nevertheless, the univer
sity was accepting bids for
the observatory’s construc
tion, Emerine said. Univer
sity officials plan to begin
construction after the con
gressional matters are
resolved in late June, he
said.
The observatory is a joint
venture between several
organizations, including
the Vatican, the university
and the Smithsonian In
stitution.
The Vatican’s $3.5
million telescope is the first
of seven telescopes to be
placed on the mountaintop.
It will be the first to test a
new technology for making
telescopic mirrors. The
Vatican telescope is the
prototype of a new genera
tion of telescopes that
utilize new mirror casting
techniques to see greater
distances into space.
Jesuit: Fight Pollution In The Street
BY CARL EIFERT
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Saying that "no one has ever
said ‘trash the polluter,”’ a Jesuit who worked seven years
for Ralph Nader suggested that environmentalists “go to
the streets” as civil rights activists did.
Father Albert J. Fritsch of Livingston, Ky., in
Washington May 18 for a science-religion conference on
“Caring for Creation,” said "the polluter is not going to
ever be stopped by just a bunch of little laws because they
(polluters) control the legal system.”
Father Fritsch, who has a doctorate in chemistry, heads
the Appalachia branch of Science in the Public Interest. He
attended the May 16-19 meeting called by the Washington-
based North American Conference on Religion and
Ecology. That organization is a successor to the North
American Conference on Christianity and Ecology that he
organized in 1987.
The name was changed to broaden the group to include
all religions, he said.
"It’s always ‘recycle, recycle,”’ he said. “Why clean up
the environment when we allow Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola
to just utterly pollute our environment” while not having
“responsibility for picking up the junk they produce.”
He said he was "not so sure how much individuals can do
anymore by themselves” in cleaning up a dirty environ
ment.
“The problem in our country is that we haven’t gotten
near what we did with the peace movement and with the
anti-war movement,” he said. “We have not gone to the
streets.”
"We’ve allowed the technical people, the lawyers and the
scientists to do all the work on the environment.”
The priest suggested that nothing would be done until the
issue is “taken to the streets and we have taken the Gand-
hian approach — Martin Luther King, people like that —
even to the point of civil disobedience.”
In an interview with Catholic News Service, the priest
said that Catholics had taken leading roles in environmen
tal organizations. Sometimes, he said, the Catholic in
fluence is “embarrassingly strong.”
He said he attributed it “to the fact of the Sacred Heart
devotion. The strong part is that we recognize our sin
fulness and we are to do something about it. We don’t blame
it on other people.”
Taking note of “a new movement” to get a pastoral letter
on the environment written by U.S. bishops, Father Fritsch
said if one is done it should not be “a lot of words.”
“Let them write an extremely short, action statement
telling us what to do. The crisis is not knowing; the crisis is
not doing.”
Sharon Daly, domestic social development director for
the U.S. Catholic Conference, said bishops in a committee
meeting in June would consider the environmental ques
tion. She said a pastoral letter on the subject was unlikely
but a statement stating public policy guidelines might be
written.
Ms. Daly said that Environmental Protection Agency ad
ministrator William K. Reilly had first suggested a pastoral
letter in commencement addresses he gave in 1989.
Father Fritsch said that his Appalachia organization
operates an environmental demonstration center in the
mountains near Livingston.
It includes low-cost housing, intensive agriculture on
"very small plots of land,” and solar energy "used to make
the environment a more compatible place,” especially for
the poor, he said.
“My whole focus is based upon the Blessed Virgin’s state
ment in the Magnificat that the lowly will rise up and the
high will be brought down,” he said, “and so the poor are
the ones who will lead the changes in the environment.”
Father Fritsch said his center also works with the Third
World in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, India and other
countries.
In this country, he is working with religious orders that
own farms to convert them into environmental demonstra
tion centers. It’s called “our earth-healing program,” he
said.
The consultations are done through land audits, he said,
that begin with videotaping the land and its buildings and
showing them to experts.
“We take their property to the consultant rather than the
consultant to them to cut costs,” he said.
About two dozen have been done, another six are being
completed and three more are planned, the priest said, in
cluding one for a Lutheran camp in North Carolina and for
Presbyterians in Colorado.
Among communities taking part, he said, were the
Sisters of St. Joseph at their motherhouse in Cleveland,
where part of their high school grounds have been turned
into a community garden with “edible landscaping.”
The 300-acre farm of the Franciscan sisters at Oldenburg,
Ind., which has laid fallow for three years, has been audited
and may soon become a demonstration of organic farming.
So far no community of religious men have taken part.
Father Fritsch said that the women religious have been
in the forefront of the environmental movement, "not the
priests, not the men religious.”
He attributed that to “a deep sense of sacrifice, well
being, a kinship to the Holy Spirit, a simplicity in their life
which others do not have, a humility that allows them to
change faster than those who are proud.”