I
PERTH, WA: August 22, 1991
Registered by Australia Post Publication No. WAR 0202
Budget only a part solution, say bishops
Number 2753
• See Page 15
POST ADDRESS: PO Box 50, Northbridge, 6000 W.A. LOCATION: 587 Newcastle Street, Cnr Douglas St (near Loftus St)
TELEPHONE: (09) 22 77 080
FAX (09) 22 77 087
PRICE 600
They've suffered enough!
Ipray asI remember
BUDAPEST: As the world pondered the whereabouts of Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul was standing in the former communist land of Hungary to praise the Soviet leader's reform policies. As he finished on Tuesday his five-day Hungarian visit, the pope prayed that "the process initiated by him not fall into decline". "I hope that the efforts made in recent years to restore voice and dignity to a whole society will not now be endangered," he said. On his meetings with Gorbachev at the Vatican in 1989 and 1990, the pope recalled: "I particularly appreciated the sincere willingness which guided him and the lofty inspiration which motivated him in the promotion of human rights and dignity as also in his commitment to his country and the international community."
LONDON (CNS): Young people in the Soviet Union have suffered enough without the prospect of a new Soviet regime making them suffer more, said Cardinal Hume of Westminster. Cardinal Hume said his first thought when he heard of Gorbachev's ouster was the memory of being among more than one million people who gathered on August 15 to see Pope John Paul H at the Polish shrine of Czestochowa. Among the young people, he said, were more than 40,000 from the Soviet Union who heard the pope urging them to build a Europe based on the values of truth, justice, freedom, peace and love.
Get we VATICAN CITY: "I hope that Gorbachev gets well soon," jibed Vatican spokesman Navarro Vallis at last Moscow Monday's cover-up of Gorbachev's whereabouts.
The Vatican places "a very high value" on Soviet laws approved under Gorbachev which guarantee "essential and elementary rights" such as freedom of conscience, he said while with Pope John Paul in Hungary. Gorbachev's important reforms political included strategic arms reduction treaties with the United States and
loosening the Soviet reins on Eastern Europe, he added. "The Vatican hopes that this process of detente and dialogue can continue," he said. The crisis is a nightmare for top Church officials who have worked for religious reform in Russia over the past six years. Pope John Paul II met with Gorbachev twice at the Vatican and both times greeted him as a man who could be trusted to deliver on his promises and who deserved public support. The pope could point to
"The young people of the Soviet Union with whom I have come into contact have had enough of controversy, of suppression of freedom," Cardinal Hume told the BBC.
a number of concrete Vatican to undertake a gains for the Church much-needed census of Gorbachev's the Church in Soviet under leadership: lands and begin reorgan• A freedom of religion ising its hierarchy there. law in 1990 which rolled • The naming of several back decades of commu- bishops in Soviet repubnist restrictions on lics with no interference churches, including from the government. those against religious • An invitation for the instruction and freedom pope to visit the country, of association. a trip which had been • The legalisation of the for next year or five-million-member foreseen 1993. Catholic Ukrainian Church, along with the • Growing recognition, restitution of some of its in policy statements by churches and other Soviet officials, that religion represents a properties. cultural strength. • The exchange of For these and other diplomatic representatives, which allowed the reasons, the pope and the
Gold13,vir
Vatican were some of Gorbachev's loudest cheerleaders, even when he was under fire at home for failed domestic policies. In 1985, reacting to Gorbachev's election as head of the Communist Party, the Vatican newspaper said the move opened "a new era for the Soviet Union". This optimism — shared by few observers at the time — was borne out as Gorbachev introduced dramatic social changes, especially in the area of human rights. breakthrough A occurred in 1988, when
Gorbachev welcomed a top-level Church delegation to Moscow for ceremonies commemorating the millennium of Christianity in what is now the Soviet Union. Early 1989 saw the restoration of the Lithuanian hierarchy, the return of the Vilnius cathedral and the freeing of a Lithuanian archbishop from house arrest. In that period, the thenVatican secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroll, summed up what Gorbachev meant to the Church. "We are always ready to dialogue. What was lack-
ing was a partner. Now a partner exists" In his first meeting with Gorbachev in late 1989, the pope in effect blessed the "perestroika" program and said the Church wanted to take full advantage of the new reforms. He emphasised the importance of the proposed law on freedom of conscience, which was passed the following spring. The two leaders greeted each other warmly, spoke a little Russian and gave the impression that a friendship was formed.
• See Page 6
'Heart and hope' of people killed LIMA, Peru: Two Polish missionaries, both Franciscans, were executed earlier this month by members of the Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") guerrilla group.
mack, after invading a remote Andean village.
Last year, the guerrillas destroyed a warehouse of the Church-run Caritas agency and warned Caritas to leave the country. agents The guerrilla group was apparently upset because the priests had The Polish priests, 31 and 33, had recently opened a charity centre in opened a mission about a year and a the region. half ago in the Diocese of Chimbote, where they coordinated pastoral In May, Sendero guerrillas shot services for 22 mountain xillages. and killed five people, including an The priests were meeting with a Australian nun, Sr Irene McCor-
group of youths when guerrillas Polish missionary priest who helps abducted them, along with a nun and run the mission was out of the country at the time of the attack and the local mayor. was to return later this month. The nun was later freed, but the The Sendero group has battled priests were shot through the head Peruvian forces since 1980 and and their bodies left along a roadside. successive governments have been The mayor was also killed. unable to stem its growth. The guerrillas have been blamed A spokesman described the murdered priests as "the heart and for more than 100,000 acts of the hope" of the local Indios peoples, sabotage, assassination and attacks on and said the order planned to villages, and for more than 20,000 continue its mission there. One other deaths.