FALL RIVER DIOCESAN PAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSETTS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS
t eanc 0 VOL. 25, NO. 32
FALL RIVER, MASS., THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 1981
20c, $6 Per Year
MANY OF THE: WORLD'S nearly billion Catholics greeted Pope John Paul II at his historic Boston Common Mass in October, 1979.
Catholics topl three-fourths billion mark VATICAN CITY (NC) There were over three-fourtl:.s of a billion Catholics in the world at the end of 1979. A rounded-off figure of 763, 644,000 church members was given in the latest "Statistical Yearbook of the Church," iSllued in July by the Vatican. The yearbook said that the number of Catholics in 1979 was 24,214,000 more than the previous year. Since world population grew at roughly the same rate, the percentage of Catholics in the world remained the same, 17.8 percent, the yearbook said. North American Catholic:ism
stood out in several areas of the statistics: - A notably higher percentage of its baptisms were adult baptisms than was the case in Europe or Central and South America. - It had the highest rate of mixed marriages in the world except in Oceania. - It processed four out of five church marriage cases that were completed throughout the world during the year.
mission regions of Africa (30 percent of all baptisms) and Asia and Oceania (each slightly over 10 percent). In Europe less than one percent of baptisms were among adults, and in Latin America (including Mexico) the figure was less than two.
Adult baptisms - defined for the statistics as baptisms administered to anyone over seven years old - were highest in the
In the world as a whole, eight out of every 100 marriages involving a Catholic was a mixed marriage, that is, one in which
Maryknollers quit
But in North America - the United States, Canada, Greenland, Bermuda, and St. Pierre and Miquelon - seven percent of the baptisms were adult.
the other partner was non-Catholic. But in North America the percentage was 33.9. In the United States, 222,666 marriages were' recorded involving two Catholics, while 126,548 involved a Catholic and a non-Catholic. In Canada 54,772 marriages involved two Catholics while 15,540 were mixed. In Oceania 46.4 percent of the church-recorded marriages were mixed. The bulk of these occurred in Australia and New Zealand, both countries with Catholic minorities and substantial Protestant majorities.
In church marriage courts 55,943 out of 70,652 decided worldwide were in North America. Of those in North America, 53,646 were in the United States. The U.S. figure in 1979 was nearly a 20 percent increase over the country's 1978 figure of 44,900 cases decided. U.S. church lawyers have attributed the high number of American marriage cases to the special permission the U.S. church courts have to use simplified procedures which dramatically reduced the time, man power and paperwork required to handle marriage cases.
Papal operation planned
ALBANY, N.Y. (NC) _. A meaningful work in a country ROME (NC) - Pope John Paul priest who was among six Mary- where one is labeled subversive II is "clinically cured" of a viral knollers who left EI Salvlldor for housing visitors unknown to infection and will probably last May to avoid potential local authorities and where one's undergo a second operation withdanger to their lives, announced life is in danger for allegedly in a week, his physicians said July 29 that they have rea(:hed saying Mass in an area con- Aug. 1. a joint decision with their sU(leri- trolled by the opposition. In their 26th medical bulletin ors and Bishop Arturo Rivera He said Maryknollers have since the May 13 assassination Damas of San Salvador not to been particularly suspect by the attempt on the pope, the ninereturn to the war-torn Latin Salvadoran government of col- member team of doctors at American nation. laborating with the insurgents Romes's Gemelli Polyclinic said The pri.est, Ma~knoll Father since the discovery last spring that the 61-year-old pope no John Spalll, a natIve of Troy, .. that a priest of the order, Mary- longer has any symptoms of the N.Y., made the announcement knoll Father Roy Borgeois, was cytomegalovirus infection which at a ~ress confer:ence July. ~9. living at a guerrilla camp. Father brought him back to the hospital He saId that despIte recogmtJon Bourgeois was missing for 10 June 20. "During the next week further by S.~!vadoran church leader.s ~f days and feared dead. Two Marythe I~portance of ~aryklli:lll s knoll nuns had already been checks will be made in connec~ork III EI.Salvador, they a~e among four missionary women tion with the decision relating to .the conclusive surgical intervenunable to IIlsure our safety III killed last December. tion," the bulletin said. the light of the increasing activity of death squads" -and recomA spokesman for Maryknoll Dr. Emilio Tresalti, chief mediFathers said that there would be cal officer at the hospital, said mended that they not return. Father Spain said it is no no Maryknoll announcement of the operation on the pope for longer possible (or him and the the withdrawal from EI Salvador reversal of a temporary colosother ~aryknollers three but it has the society's approval tomy would take place "probably within a week," priests and two sisters - to do Turn to Page Six
Vatican Radio said the operation would be performed with total anesthesia and would last about an hour. "The operation does not present particular risks except for the simple generic risk inherent in an abdominal operation of a septic nature," it said. Tresalti said he was "perfectly convinced" that Pope John Paul would "recover his full physical efficiency" within a month or two after the second operation. "The pope's psychological and moral state is beyond that of his physical recovery, which is not yet complete," he aded, "He is perfectly himself, and even enriched by this experience," Pope John Paul is expected to remain at the hospital for one or two weeks after the operation and then go to the papal summer in Castelgandolfo, residence Italy, until late September or
early October. "At present the pope is very well, he is working normally and has regained weight," said Tresalti. Father Romeo Panciroli, director of the Vatican Press Office, said Aug. 2 that Pope John Paul takes two or three walks each day around the II th floor of the hospital, greeting other patients and sometimes going to a window to bless visitors below. The pope went to the window of his room three times July 31 to greet 75 Polish Boy Scouts who came to Rome from the Archdiocese of Warsaw, Poland. The young people were singing Polish songs outside the window. Pope John Paul also went to his window July 2~ to greet groups of people who had come to Rome on trips originally scheduled to coincide with the pope's weekly general audience, Father Panciroli said.