Bishop Gassis visits

Bishop Macram Max Gassis, a highly respected human rights advocate for Sudan, visited Woodside Priory with a message of serious suffering and need in his native country. He met with small groups of students and made a presentation in the Chapel to the entire campus community.

He illustrated his points with a videotape of the conditions in the Nuba Mountain region, where he is striving to improve health conditions and maintain a school.

Bombing has left the school damaged and children injured. The church is caring for some 1,200 children at this facility, many of them orphans and many of them victims of enslavement.

A civil war has divided the country, with the Muslim Northern troops having control of the government and attacking and persecuting the Catholic and other non-Muslim native people of the South, the bishop said. The situation is widely recognized as an attempt at genocide and the Catholic church’s effort is the only help available for some of these people, the bishop said.

The regime does not permit the World Food Program of the United Nation and the Red Cross to do rescue work in the area, he said.

The bishop airlifts in food and such supplies as used clothes, seeds, tools, scholastic materials, bibles and medical supplies. The usual cost per trip is $18,000 per flight carrying 2.5 tons of goods. The program to support the children costs $120 per child per year, or $144,000.

Equipment to produce clean water, ground transportation vehicles, and pay for teachers and catechists are among other needs listed on Bishop Gassis’ website.

Bishop Gassis became a spokesperson for his country by testifying before a committee of Congress in 1988. In 1990, when he came to the United States for treatment of cancer, the Sudanese government barred his return because of his criticism of its human rights record.

Realizing that he could not go home, he turned instead to publicizing the Sudanese dilemma around the world.

More information is available at the Bishop’s website, www.petersvoice.org/bishop.htm

Bishop Gassis has become a spokesperson for the persecuted in his native country, Sudan.

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Woodside Priory School Board of Trustees and Board of Directors

Front row from left Donna Wengert-Neff, Parent Dotty Hayes, Parent Linda Andreini, Co-President, Parent Association Anne Hannigan, Alumni Parent Kathie Maxfield, Friend Wayne Davison, Alumni Parent Father Pius Horvath, Benedictine Community Second row from left Rev. Mark Cooper, Board of Directors Craig Johnson, Friend Gene Flath, Friend Andy Schilling, Alumnus Janet Brownstone, Co-President, Parent Association Bob Simon, Friend Ray Rothrock, Friend Al Ebneter, Friend Art Schultz, Parent Father Martin Mager, Board of Directors Abbot Matthew Leavy, Board of Directors George Huertas, Alumnus Robert Klein, Parent Brother Edward Englund, Board of Directors

Not pictured: Bob Ward, Friend (see Trustee Profile in this issue); Sandra McCarthhy, Parent and Alumni Parent; Father William Sullivan, Board of Directors; and Liz Cirino, Alumni Parent. Woodside Priory School is governed by a

Board of Trustees, which deals with planning and policy matters; and a Board of Directors, which deals with fiduciary matters and oversees the philosophical principles of the school. Members of the Board of Directors include monks from Woodside Priory and St. Anselm Abbey, with which WPS has been affiliated for more than 20 years. All of the members of the Board of Directors have also been members of the WPS Benedictine community. Profiles of many trustees and directors are on the WPS Outline Community website.

Woodside Priory School 302 Portola Road Portola Valley, CA 94028 (650) 851-8221 fax (650) 851-2839

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