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FALL RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSETTS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS FALL RIVER, MASS.
VOL. 44, NO. 46 • Friday, December 1,2000
Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly • $14 Per Year
State appeals clinics' buffer zone law stay
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PEACE - Gertrude Alves of Our Lady of Grace Parish, Westport, tended by Sister Martha, was a congenial host to a visitor from The Anchor. (Anchor photo)
Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne mark centennial • Sisters from the Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Home in Fall River will join colleagues at Dec. 9 ceremonies in St. Patrick's Cathedral, N. Y. By JAMES N. DUNBAR FALL RIVER - First-time visitors to the Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Home on Bay Street are understandably uneasy because they are entering a facility that cares for incurable cancer patients. But after just a few minutes inside, one can truly feel an atmosphere of peace and warmth, where love, understanding and compassion prevail, and see people being
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given the physical, spiritual and emotional an open house at Rosary Hill, the support needed to accept the limitations motherhouse and chapel in Hawthorne, imposed by illness. N.Y." It is indeed a home setting, where the DoIt is a most fitting jubilee for the more minican Sisters of Hawthorne since 1932 than 80 Sisters of the Congregation across have, with the help of voluntary contribu- America. For I00 years they have been sheltions, given free, inilividualized care to those tering and nursing needy, incurable cancer dying of cancer, who are unable to pay for patients, as they too grow in union with God. nursing care elsewhere. The work was started by Rose Last. weekend, Sister Maureen, who is Hawthorne, the daughter ofAmerican novthesupenor'ofthe C:O!:JUllunity that includes elist Nathaniel Hawthorne, on the lower seven' nu'ns, cheerfully met me and talked East Side of New York. Rose, brought up about the excitement she and other Domini- in Concord, was a convert to Catholicism, can Sisters of Hawthorne at six free hornes whose devoted care of the poor sick began in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minne- with a desire to give active witness to Christ. sota and Georgia, are feeling. And as the Sisters mark the centennial, they "Some of us, not all of us but includ- witness to their founder's value of human . ing some volun- life to its last moment, in stark contrast to teers and employ- today's devaluation of it. ees, will be heading On a Sunday afternoon in September, to St. Patrick's Ca- 1896, Rose Hawthorne, then 45, .boarded thedral in New a New York City streetcar to, as she later York to observe our wrote, " ...hunt for the region in the city ;. con g reg a t i on's ... best fitted for my attempt at nursing ~ lOOth anniversary of among the poor." It marked the end of ;; founiling," she said. Rose's privileged life as a member of New ; "Although our anni- York's literary elite, and the beginning of ( versary is Dec. 8, the her life as a humble servant of the poorf highlight will be an est of the poor. i afternoon Mass at St. The section she moved into was synonyPatrick's Cathedral mous with poverty, crime and ilisease. The ~ on Dec. 9, celebrated poor lived in dark, airless tenements, whole ~. by Archbishop Edfamilies in one room. But the cancerous fared even worse. Because it was thought t.,1 ward M. Egan. ~I ~, "We will have a to be contagious, many were feared and ;~·i reception after- shunned by family and friends and left to ;:J wards," she said die, alone and uncared for, in dank cellars i with a smile, "and Tum to page 13 - Hawthome . ., the next day there is
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• Judge's ruling supports Pro-Ufers'right of access to counsel patients. By CAniOUC NEWS SERVICE BOSTON - Saying it violates free speech, a federal judge has barred Massachusetts from enforcing a law fonning a "buffer zone" against protests at abortion clinics. The state attorney general said he would appeal the decision. In a 13-page ruling last week, U.S. District Judge Edward F. Harrington enjoined the state against enforcing the law, . pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. The law allows employees and others associated with abortion clinics to approach patients outside those facilities to escort them inside, but says protesters cannot come within six feet of patients without their consent when they are within 18feet of a clinic entrance. Harrington~d~l~ili~a~
against free speech rights of abortion opponents because of their views. Clinic workers "constitute very zealous advocates for" abortion with "strong financial interest or philosophic incentive" for their views, he ~d.
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