SERVING . .. SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS
VOL. 25, No. 1
Report hints complicity
FAll RIVER, MASS., THURSDAY, JANUARY 1, 1981
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WASHINGTON (NC) A! presidential commission found I "no direct evidence" of who ]tilled four American missionary I women in El Salvador, it repl:>rt- , ed, adding that "there is a tligh j probability that an attempt was made to conceal the deaths" by at least some Salvadoran (Ifficials. It also found "no evidence suggested that any senior Sa]v~足 doran authorities were impli:cated in the murders themselves." The report was prepared by former Undersecretary of State William Bowdler who visited EI Salvador at the request of Prl~si足 dent Carter. The four Americans, Ma.ryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dc,rothy Kazel and lay volunteer Jean Donovan were killed Dec. 2 and buried near the murder site in rural EI Salvador. According to the report: "All four women had been shot in the head. The face of one had been destroyed. The underwear of three were found separately. Bloody bandanas were also found in the grave." The presidential commission's report traces what appear to have been the last steps of the four slain women and details evel:lts after it became clear they WI~ missing and then had been kill-
Pontiff asks true freedom
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ed. The women were last SE!en about 7 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Salvadoran airport by a group of Canadian church members, who were to be in El Salvador fol' a few days. The Canadians and Americans chatted and then the Canadians left the airport first. They were stopped and searched at gunpoint near the airport but were unharmed. The American commission could identify no one who had seen the women alive after the Canadians had. Despite some questions, the report does not implicate the Salvadoran forces explicitly. But it points out the circumstantial evidence. "The evidence suggesting security force complicity, either in the murder or afterwards, is cir'cumstantial," the report states. It says: - "There was a patrol of security forces stopping cars at the outskirts of the airport moments before the probable arrival of the churchwomen. The following morning, in spite of the fact that, the women were obV'iously foreigners, the burial was arranged immediately under Turn to Page Six
20c, $6 Per Year
A TYPICAL BALL SCENE
Sunday is decorating day for the Bishop's Ball More than 100 persons on arrangements committees for the 26th annual Bishop's Charity Ball will meet at 1 p.m. Sunday at Lincoln Park Ballroom, North Dartmouth. There they will decorate the huge ballroom in preparation for the annual winter social event, to be held Friday, Jan. 9. Hundreds of yards of pastel materials will adorn the stage, the bishop's and presentees' boxes and the entire dancing
area of the ballroom. Colors will carry out the springtime theme of the ball and will include butterhead green, azalea pink and'devon violet. Ball proceeds benefit Natareth Hall schools for exceptional children and four diocesan summer camps for both underprivileged and exceptional youth. Al Rainone's orchestra of Fall River will play from 8 to 8:45 p.m. in the main ballroom and
from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. in the ballroom lounge, while the Meyer Davis orchestra will be heard in the main ballroom. Young women of the diocese will be presented to Bishop Cronin at 9:10 p.m. and the traditional Grand March will take place at 10 p.m. Msgr. Anthony M. Gomes, diocesan director for the ball, has announced that tickets will be available at the door.
Poverty over by year 2000? By Jeff Endrst
It said that of the 122 million children born last year, one in UNITED NATIONS (NC) every 10 is now dead. Most were For the first time in human his~ children of the "absolutely poor." tory it is now possible to eradi- Three out of every 10 of these cate poverty, illness and illiter- children die before the age of acy, according to the executive five. Not even one in 10 is ever director of the United Nations' seen by a health worker or imChildren's Emergency Fund munized against the common (UNICEF), James Grant. killer diseases of childhood. The cost of eliminating these Probably only half will ever evils by the year 2000 would be learn to read and write. about $50 million a day, the cost UNICEF suggested that by the of one fighter plane, said Grant in his 1980 State of the World's year 2000, all countries could achieve an infant mortality rate Children report. The UNICEF report claimed of 50 or less per 1,000; an averthe job could be done with a age life expectancy of 60 years massive infusion of funds and in or more and a literacy rate of at some cases through a radical least 75 percent. change in foreign aid priorities. The report acknowledged that
these targets are ambitious, given the dark economic horizons. It even admitted that as things appear now the gap between the "healthy" and the "poor" nations will have further widened by the end of the century. By way of illustration of this problem, UNICEF expects most Latin American countries to reach a per capita income of $2,000 a year by 2000, an average achieved by Western Europe in 1960. But the poorest countries in southern Asia and Saharan Africa will reach a level of only about $300 in the next 20 years. Tum to Page Ten
VAiICAN CITY (NC) - Both peace and freedom are threatenedby terrorism, totalitarian systems, religious repression and economic inequalities, Pope John Paul II said in his message for today's World Day of Peace. In a 14-page statement on the day's theme, "To Serve Peace, Respect Freedom," the pope addressed a variety of issues, in-' eluding materialism, abortion, world hunger and nuclear warfare. Although he said that "the spectacle that meets our eyes at the beginning of the 80s ,seems hardly reassuring," Pope John Paul said he' spoke "from a powerful conviction that peace is possible, but that it is also something that has to be continually won." He addressed the message to "all of you who are building peace, to all of you who are the leaders of the nations, to you, brothers and sisters, citizens of the world, to you young people, who dare to dream of a better world." In a section of the document on "conditions that call for a fresh examination today," the pope listed a number of political and social situations which threaten freedom. "The freedom of nations is wounded when small natlions are forced to align themselves with large ones in order to ensure their right to independent existence or to survival," he said in an apparent reference to Soviet bloc countries like his native Poland. "There is no true freedom which is the foundation of peace - when all powers are concentrated in the hands of a single social class, a single race or a single group or when the common good is merged with the interests of a single party that is identified with the state," Pope John Paul added. He also condemned "various forms of anarchy (which lead) in extreme cases to political terrorism or to blind acts of violence" and mourned "the problem of systematic or selective repression - accompanied by assassination and torture, cases of disappearance or banishment - suffered by so many people, including bishops, priests, Religious and Christian lay people working in the service of their neighbor. Social problems such as unemployment and materialistic systems which leave men "caught up in a gigantic machine, in a tangle of unwanted or unmanTurn to Page Sixteen