FAll RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSmS CAPE COD &THE ISLANDS VOL. 34, NO. S •
Friday, February 2, 1990
FALL RIVER, MASS.
Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
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Pope begs world to aid Africans
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BISHOP O'ROURKE, working in his corn patch and in more conventional attire. (CNS photos)
"Whoopee!" exclaims retiring bishop WASHINGTON (CNS) - Bishop Edward W. O'Rourke, 72, of Peoria, Ill., a colorful figure nationally known for his simple lifestyle and lifelong involvement in rural concerns, retired for health reasons on Jan. 22. Bishop John J. Myers, 48, his coadjutor since 1987, automatically succeeds him as bishop of Peoria. When he was named bishop of Peoria in 1971, Bishop O'Rourke had been a nationally known Catholic spokesman on farm issues for 11 years as executive director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. Within two months after he was ordained a bishop, he moved out of the 62-year-old bishop's mansion in Peoria into a five-room brick house in a rundown neighborhood on the north side of,town. He sold the 24-room mansion, which he called "terribly extravagant for one person," and put the money into a retirement fund for priests. Born Oct. 31, 1917, in Downs, Ill., Edward W. O'Rourke was ordained a priest of the Peoria diocese in 1944. He was a camp,us ministry chaplain and diocesan rural life director until 1960, when he was named director ofthe National Catholic Rural Life Conference. In 1956 he directed the resettlement in the Peoria diocese of hundreds of Hungarian refugees. Bishop O'Rourke received national attention as an advocate of simple lifestyles following an editorial he wrote on the subject in 1974 in his diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Post. His 1979 book on the same subject, "Living Like a King: A Plea and a Plan for a Simple Life," was described by one reviewer as "a Franciscan manifesto" aimed at a gas-guzzling, fast-food society. Writing in 1984 on the impact of
his advocacy of a simple life, he said that in the 10 years since he first made that plea, people of his diocese had tripled what they gave to the needy at home and abroad. He made international headlines in 1976 when he was on a New York-to-Chicago TWA flight that was hijacked and diverted to Paris by five U.S. Croatian nationalists. He led the passengers in prayer and tried to persuade the hijackers to give themselves up during the 32-hour ordeal, which ended with their peaceful surrender to French police. As a rural life specialist, he has often criticized federal farm policies. In the 1985 farm crisis, he
TV Mass change Because of programming changes implemented by WLN.E-TV, the Fall River Diocesan Television Mass will be aired at 8 a.m. on Channel 6 beginning this Sunday, Feb. 4. It was previously aired at 11 a.m. each Sunday. Those in the Greater New Bedford area who do not have cable TV will be able to see a rebroadcast of the Mass at 11 a.m. on UHF Channel·20. . Now in its 27th year, the television Mass is sponsored by Bishop Daniel A. Cronin to serve the spiritual needs of those unable to attend a parish Mass because of age or infirmity.
expressed shock at the "shrug of the shoulders" response of many Americans toward the plight of family farmers. At the same time he freely criticized farmers when he thought they were w~ong. Despite surgery to replace his right hip joint in 1977, a stroke in 1985 and subsequent heart problems that have forced him to use a pacemaker, Bishop O'Rourke has maintained a large garden in his back yard and another on a city plot, giving what he couldn't use to neighbors and the needy and occasionally reporting to his flock on his gardening experiences. InJ 986, for example, a headline in his diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Post, reported "Raccoons, 312, bishop 8." The story explained that raccoons had made off with all but 8 ears of the episcopal corn crop. The bishop lodged several complaints against the marauders, noting that they broke the rules by eating corn "at least two weeks before it was ripe." They also worked a seven-day week, while he, the bishop, kept the Lord's day holy, harvesting no corn on Sunday. Bishop O'Rourke ended by threatening the raccoons with a 1987 crop of "broccoli and cucumbers" instead of sweet corn. In retirement, he said, he would move out of his diocesan-owned house into a nearby Benedictine run retirement home. He said he will continue gardening in his city plot, do spiritual counseling at the retirement home and work on ways to ease racial tensions and economic problems in his neighborhood. He said he woke up on the day his retirement was to be announced and his first thought was "Whoopee!" "Now I will show you h'ow leisure can be enjoyed!" he declared.
BOBO-DIOULASSO, Burkina Faso (CNS) - Pope John Paul II took his traveling social Gospel to the parched savannah region of Burkina Faso as he neared the end of his Jan. 25-Feb. 1 tour of five drought-prone nations in West Africa, where he issued repeated appeals for international ai4'.- After Burkina Faso,heVlsited Chad, a republic with a population of nearly 6 million, about 6 percent of them Catholic. He was to return to Rome yesterday. In Burkina Faso, he said he felt he "would not be able to die in peace" without having pleaded on behalf of the region's poor and hungry. At a Mass Jan. 30 in front of a freshly whitewashed railway station in Bobo-Dioulasso, the pope read from a letter he had received from a local teacher. It prayed for the day when "no more babies will be dying around us." During his sermon in BoboDioulasso, a transportation center in the country's arid grasslands, the pope emphasized that the Catholic Church was trying to imitate Christ in serving the poor. "You are working for the development of your country. I passionately ask the whole world to support you who know ~he weight of poverty," the pope said. The Mass, attended by some 20,000 people, mixed music and customs that have been worked into the local liturgy. Dancers
swayed to slow melodies played on the "balafon," a wooden xylophone, keeping the beat with plastic switches that, in the Bobo animist tradition, are used to capture spirits. The papal procession was led by a young woman bearing the New Testament, past a pile of 10 rocks to be used as cornerstones for new churches in the diocese. The pope, pink-faced after five days in the African sun, appeared to enjoy the ceremony as much as his hosts. Here, as in other stops throughout the trip, he said the people may be "poor in material goods" but are rich in generosity and spirit. The previous night, he had called the grinding poverty of West Africa "an open wound" that demands world attention. "In the name of justice, the bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, begs his brothers and sisters not to scorn the starving people of this continent," the pope said in an appeal Jan. 29. "How would history judge a generation that, having every means· to· feed the world's population, refused to do so with fratricidal indifference?" he said. It was the pope's most direct statement on Africa's economic crisis and the apparent lack of attention it is receiving from the developed nations - particularly the west. Turn to Page Six
. . ;il }~ POPE JOHN Paul II releases a dove given to him py a young girl after his arrival in Praia, Santiago Island, Cape Verde. (CNS photo from UPI-Reuters)