PERTH, WA: December 28, 1989
Registered by Australia Post Publication No. WAR 0202
So Jesus went back with them to Nazareth, where he was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew, both in body and wisdom, gaining favour with God and men.
Number 2668
POST ADDRESS: PO Box 50, Northbridge, 6000 W.A. LOCATION: 26 John St, Northbridge (east off Fitzgerald St). FAX (09) 328 7307 PRICE 600 TELEPHONE: (09) 328 1388
Road to our end
VATICAN CITY (CNS): While the world longs for the peace promised by the birth of Jesus, "every day our brothers and sisters are dying" in the Middle East, in Central America and in other regional wars, Pope John Paul II said in his "urbi et orbi" (to the city and to the world) annual Christmas Day message which was beamed by satellite to more than 50 countries.
The pope offered a prayer for "this old Europe of ours," especially for Eastern European countries "awakened from a nightmare" of repression under communist governments. But he said people all around the world are "dying in fratricidal struggles for supremacy" and are "dying because of senseless and reckless courses of action". The pope said that through Jesus, God has welcomed "the men and women of the second millennium now hastening to its end". "He has not regarded our contradictions, our infidelities, our inconsistencies," the pope said. Rather, he sent his son to heal all people, "to tell us that by taking the road we are taking, we are racing toward selfdestruction." "The world longs for reconciliation: yet every day thousands of refugees are abandoned and rejected," the pope said. While the pope did not mention a specific group of refugees, a week earlier he had called for a humanitarian solution
to the plight of some 45,000 Vietnamese refugees facing forced repatriation from Hong Kong. "Ethnic and religious minorities go neglected in their basic needs," the pope said, and "whole groups are kept on the margins of society in ever-growing isolation". "The world longs for balance, both within and without: yet every day the environment becomes more polluted for reasons of selfinterest or from lack of concern," he said. In his message, the pope also prayed for an end to "all barriers" of race, ideology and intolerance among people and asked God to "guide the negotiations now under way for arms reduction and control". "Strengthen all who strive for an end to hostilities that have continued for too long in Africa and Asia, so that the people involved may regain their freedom and their rights through frank and trusting dialogue," he said.
1T.
Inhuman ways and resistance VATICAN CITY: For half a national independence," century Eastern Euro- he said. peans have been resisting Resistance always must the "terrible evils," be the reaction to "inhuincluding repressive man systems," the pope governments, which were said. unleashed by the war, the In a Christmas Eve pope said. interview with Italian "We know that as much state television, Pope as this resistance cost, it John Paul pointed particwill always be indispen- ularly to the end of onesable, and not only for party communist rule in the ethical motives of most of Eastern Europe
"beginning with my Poland," which elected a non-communist prime minister in August. "It was also extraordinary that all of these events developed in a quite peaceful manner. The only sad and painful exception was Romania. But it is a stage of the same process," the pope said.
"It is also significant that all of this comes in the year 1989, 50 years after the outbreak of the Second World War, which began all of these tragedies," he said. The war "was a trial from which the people are finally emerging as winners," the pope said. The interviewer told the pope that many people have said that the peaceful changes in Europe could not
have happened without his influence. "To this there is only one response," the pope said. "There is-providence which guides the destinies of people, of humanity, also of individuals. And sometimes providence makes use of useless servants." The praise, he said, belongs to God's providence and to the protection of Mary, mother of Christ.
Latest work of Gerry Roleystone artist Gerry Darwin has produced the resin-bronze lifesize sculpture for a new church of St Brigid in Dubbo NSW. Named simply The Dubbo Madonna this latest work of Mr Darwin concentrates on the young Jesus, in contrast with the adolescent Jesus he sculpted last year for the Marist College in Canberra.