09.03.99

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t eanc 0 VOL. 43, NO. 34 • Friday, September 3, 1999

Timorese await autonomy vote result in terror ~

Bishop Belo promises not to leave those entrusted by the Church to his care, no matter what the risk to him. By CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

DILl, East Timor - The largely Catholic population of East Timor waited for the result of last Monday's U.N.-sponsored ballot on autonomy amid a backdrop of ongoing violence. On the day of the vote, an East Timorese working for the United Nations was stabbed and killed, the first U.N. worker to be killed in the violence leading I,Ip to the ballot. Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning apostolic administrator ofDili, appealed Aug. 30 to both the pro- and anti-independence camps to work together for peace. Posters were circulated threatening death to Bishop Belo by pro-Indonesia militias who were terrorizing much of the East Timor population. "My appeal to the leaders is that they are able to convince their bases to accept the verdict of the people and to lay down their arms and help make political compromise to ... work for peace and reconciliation," Bishop Belo said. About 95 percent of eligible East Timorcse were believed to have voted, including Timorese living abroad such as in the United States, Australia and Portugal. Voting was reported relatively peaceful, with heavily armed police standing guard along with unarmed U.N. police advisers at the 200 polling places in East Timor. Results of the vote were not expected to be announced until next week. In a statement read at an Aug. 29 Mass in Dili, Bishop Belo had urged East Timorese to vote according to their conscience and Tum to page J3 - East Timor

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Marion couple celebrates 70th wedding anniversary By JAMES N. DUNBAR

Fairhaven. "My wife and I have been members at St. Rita's for more MARION - At a time when chances of keeping a marriage than 33 years and it was there that we renewed our wedding vows. I going are described in scary and grim percentages, the fact that even managed to wear a necktie." He shook his head and added, "I John and Mary DePina are celebrating their 70th wedding anniver- hate neckties." sary is more than incredible. The saga began when John DePina came from the Cape Verde Islands to this country in April The incredulity is even more __~~~~ 1912 as an 27-month-old amazing when one visits the ... ~ JOHN & MARY small, two-bedroom cotwith his mother, Maria. DEPINA, 1929 "My father, Zacariah tage off Route 6 where DePina, had come the couple, who wed here about 1905 in 1929 when he was and sent back for 19 and she was 16, my mother and raised four boys me. He rarely and four girls, went to even as he worked church, but the cranberry my mother bogs for $7 a did and we atweek and she tended St. too worked Patrick's in even as she Wareham, the cared for her only church growing family. J nearby in "Take a look those days," ) J at all the wonderJohn recalled. ful pictures of our J 1IIIIiiii "We lived in parents, our chilMarion and I dren, the 26 grandgraduated from children, the 30 the elementary great-grandchildren, school and was supand the five, soon-to~ JOHN & MARY posed to go to the be six great-great grandhigh school in Wareham. DEPINA, 1999 children, that our home My parents didn't speak has been and continues to be English, but I grew up speakthe homestead for," said John ing some English and Portuguese. I reDePina, who will be 90 in November. "This is where Mary, who is 86, and I made our home and still do." member carrying a note when I entered school there telling about On Sunday, August 21, the family gathered from across the na- my little knowledge of words. I went through the 9th grade. But I tion to honor the patriarch and matriarch at a Mass celebrated in St. quit high school. I guess I thought I knew it aIL" It was 1925 and John went to work driving trucks and was a Rita's Church by pastor Father William O. Campbell, marki'ng the wedding anniversary, and a reception and party attended by more laborer; he cleaned ditches, did sanding and all kinds of jobs. When Tum to page J3 - Anniversary than 200 people that lasted until midnight in a restaurant in

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Labor Day statement calls on Catholics to transforlll world ~

"This Labor Day, we need to reflect as Christians on the values we seek to advance in our economic and public life." - Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, chairman, U.S. bishop's Domestic Policy Committee for Labor Day. By CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

A WORKER tends to a pineapple field in Hawaii. In their Labor Day statement the U.S. bishops said Catholics should use the holiday to recall how the Church has "long recognized the dignity of work and the rights of workers." Labor Day is Sept. 6. (CNS photo by Mimi Forsyth)

WASHINOlDN -American Catholics are being encouraged this Labor Day to take their faith into the world by helping transform business and politics, factories and offices, homes and schools. In an annual statement issued by the chairman of the U.S. bishops' Domestic Policy Committee for Labor Day, which this year is

Sept. 6, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony said Catholics.are called to examine economic relationships through the lens of Catholic social teaching principles. "The Church asks Catholics to think about public policy proposals not only from the perspective of their individual or family self-interest, but also from the perspective of average and low-wage workers and their families," he said in the statement. Americans have much to be grateful for - economic freedom, low inflation and economic growth, Cardinal Mahony wrote. "But our prosperity is not being widely shared. Too many have been left behind and the gap in family income continues to widen. "The top five percent of the population takes a larger share of personal income today than similar people did 30 years ago Tum to page J3 - Labor Day


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