VOL. 35, NO. 12
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Friday, March 22, 1991
F ALL RIVER, MASS.
Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
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Holy Thursday letter to world's priests
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"We simply need to love our priesthood" VATICAN CITY (CNS) Confusion about the meaning of the priesthood is lessening as more people experience the need for priests in their communities, Pope John Paul II said. "Lay people are seeing the indispensable need for priests as a condition for their own authentic Christian life and their own apostolate," the pope said in a letter to priests worldwide for Holy Thursday, 1991. Pope John Paul said, "We simply need to love our priesthood, to give ourselves completely to it, so that the truth about the ministerial priesthood may thus become attract.ive to others." It was the 11th time that Pope John Paul had written to priests for Holy Thursday - the commemoration day ofthe Last Supper and in many dioceses a day when priests renew their priestly promises. The pope said that the world Synod of Bishops on priestly for. mation last October brought "a new maturity in the way of looking at priestly service in the church." "This maturity finds expression. in a more profound interpretation of the very essence of the sacramental priesthood, and thus also of the personal life of each and every priest, that is to say, of each priest's participation in the saving mystery of Christ," he said. The pope opened his letter with
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alinefromlsaiah-"TheSpiritof the Lord is upon me" - which Jesus quoted when speaking at the synagogue in Nazareth. . "I n their immed iate setting these words point to the prophetic mission of the Lord as the one who proclaims the Gospel. But we can also apply them to the manifold grace which he communicates to us," the pope told his fellow priests. Archbishop Laghi said the pope chose the quote "to underline that it is not by an election of the community, but by the imposition of hands by the bishop that a man 'is constituted for the good of men in things regarding God. '" The pope said that following the Second Vatican Council an awareness of priestly identity "has in some quarters become less sure" because of a misreading of council documents. The pope did not explain how the teachings were misinterpreted, but said that "a significant transformation" has begun to reverse the trend. The "need for priests - in some ways a growing phenomenon should help to overcome the crisis of priestly identity," he said. "The experience of recent decades shows ever more clearly how much the priest is needed both in the church and in the world, not in some 'laicized' form, but in the form which is drawn from the Turn to Page II
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A PALESTINIAN woman appears to ignore Israeli border police frisking a Palestinian man. (CNS/ UPI-Reuters photo)
Life tragic under Israeli curfew By John Thavis BElT SAHOUR, Israeli-occupied West Bank (CNS) -In a hill town south of Jerusalem, Mary N. watched the soldiers' jeeps pass on the road that runs by her house, and listened to her children grow restive in the kitchen. "For the last few months, all I've seen is violence, which I hate," she said. "The curfew is on and the children are fed up in here. They can't concentrate. They say they don't want to live anymore. It hurts to hear these expressions."
AT THE ANNU AL Diocesan Council of Catholic Women retreat, held this year at the Family Life Center, North'Dartmouth, and themed "The Women around Jesus," from left, DCCW Church Communities chairman Alice Loew; president Madeline Wojcik; retreat master Father Mark R. Hession; recording secretary and retreat cochairman Theresa Lewis; retreat chairman Mary Galvin. They 'are looking at a retreat memento, a depiction of the women around Jesus at his crucifixion. (Lavoie photo)
For the Palestinian mother of three teen-agers, March 12 was just another day in the 24th year of Israeli military occupation. For Israel, it was the second day of U.S. Secretary of State James Baker's post-Gulf war peace-building tour. A few miles down the road, in fact, Mrs. Baker was paying a visit to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. "It's my hometown, five minutes away, and I'm not allowed to go there," said Mrs. N, who did not want her last name used. Like most Palestinians, her movement in the occupied territories is severely restricted. "I don't have much hope for a solution. The Americans and the Israelis don't want one," she said somberly. "They are not going to give up an inch of land." She sat on a couch in her wellkept house, beneath a picture of Mary and Jesus. Like most residents of Beit Sahour, her family is Christian. Their living room win<low looks down on Shepherds' Field, where tradition says the angel appeared to shepherds the night Jesus was born. Since the beginning of the Gulf war, Beit Sahour has lived under a blanket curfew that only recently has been lifted sporadically during the day. The curfew is like a prison, her children say. No going out to play, no school, no shopping, no socializing. Outside, soldiers patrol constantly for curfew violators. In February, when daily life appeared grimmest, things got worse. A cousin, I4-year-old Salam Mutzlah, who lived nearby, was shot dead by a Jewish settler. On this particular afternoon, three weeks after the killing, the Mutzlah home was full of women in black who had come to pray as
part of a traditional40-day mourning period. Salam's mother stood in her kitchen, holding two-year-old Amira, who was sucking a lollipop and saying something in Arabic. "Amira says she wants to visit heaven - just her alone - and see her brother," Mrs. Mutzlah said. There is a hole in the doublepaned kitchen window made by a bullet from a high-velocity assault rifle of the type issued by the military to many Israeli settlers. Salam's mother said she was cooking supper when there was a sudden crash behind her. She turned around and saw her only son lying dead on the floor, shot in the head, still clutching a TV remote-control. The family tried vainly to find medical help, she said, but the curfew was in force. "He is a martyr," the family says of Salam. They recalled how he loved sports and teased his mother. His fate has left a mark on his cousins. Mary N. said her own 14year-old son Yousef was once caught in front of his house and beaten by soldiers for breaking the curfew. Yousef said he dresses in green to blend into the Shepherds' Fields, where he secretly meets his friends. His sister, 16-year-old Samira, resents missing teen-age fun. "I've done nothing. I've just stayed at home," she said. Mrs. N. worries about education. She said that when schools were closed at the beginning of the uprising, she helped organize a home school in her basement for 89 children, but authorities closed it down. Every facet ofdaily life is colored by the occupation. Mail is routinely opened by auTum to Page II